About Obsidian

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Conner,

this is interesting to read.
But what do you do for the search heuristic?

I think the most interesting thing is that programs with more time get a playing strength boost when I compare them to many of the others.
And as far as I know, most of it has to do with the search heuristic.

It's not that I'm going to spend a lot of time on it, constantly looking at whether the results are proportionately better with more time. But my feeling in looking at chess games with your engine is ... that Seer does indeed get the boost.

So I am sure you are working on some nice ideas.
Maybe your engine can beat Stockfish in the near future.

I often think that the most important thing in chess is the pawn structure. The problem attackers have after attacking chess and having no advantage with it. At the end of aggressiveness the pawn structure is bad and the danger of losing the game is high. This has been the main question for me for a while. Maybe the style Seer plays is more successful than a too aggressive style. But if I am looking in Uralochka ... also a high playing strength and very successfull with attacking chess ... an objection!

I don't know, but the fact is ... I like the attacking chess engines because there is a lot of fire on the board.

I try to understand what Seer is doing and often I think ... that the pawn structure of Seer is always good and that is the reason for the high playing strength Seer has and the reason for much stronger results with more time.

The secrets of the game chess?
The pawn struture is for me on position 1.

Best
Frank

Your 2.8.0 is really very very nice! I have here a lot of fun with your engine.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Jost,

like your post, contain real things from everyday life.

Stockfish can beat Stockfish ... that is really interesting.
Stockfish with 6+3 against Stockfish with 66+6!

Now that I know the results, I think the day may come when others can beat Stockfish.
Stockfish will not be number 1 all the time.
On the other hand, why not but I believe more that Stockfish will not all the time the number 1.
Often I am thinking with long-time analyses Stockfish lose to much from the advantage.

Best
Frank

[smatovic]

But all the programmers have been using TalkChess for many years.
....

Obviously the computer chess Zeitgeist moved on from usenet over bulletin boards to now Dicscord chat groups. I see it as pool where people share ideas, implementations, knowledge. It's not a bad thing Frank, every generation has its own kind of tech to communicate with, now it's Discord, rapid/instant/stream communication, or alike.

--
Srdja

[Frank Quisinsky]

It seems to be the case, it is what it is. I remember that Gambit-Soft gave 2000 DM for the programming of the first German chess forum. That was really an event, because a very large group of people likes to look for discussions about computer chess. Today people are here and there. Not easy for the rating list people, in the past they searched every forum to add the results. Today there is much more to do for this group. Too much for me, because I have other hobbies than searching the www for computer chess information.

A real madness is spreading in order to distribute information. Too many organisations wanting a piece of the cake and wanting to tie people to the PC. Younger people in particular jump on every bandwagon and don't realise that their lives are being gold-plated. It's a shame! All this communication stuff is getting out of hand. And it has nothing to do with whether you want to go down that road or not.

During a long bus journey, I chatted to a younger lady. It took her exactly 40 minutes to log on to all the platforms and check her mobile phone to see if any messages, smilies, likes had arrived. She laughed at me and told me that she does this 3-4 times a day, on weekend more often. I often get annoyed with myself because I've been looking after these things myself for a long time professionally and even encouraged them.

If everything is kept within limits, that's OK, but today that's more wishful thinking.

[smatovic]

....

Maybe give it a try? Seems to join Engine Programming Discord is sufficient to cover recent chess engine development:

Discord Channels
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=82700

I myself tried, lurked into Discord, but this kind of communication is simply not mine, or alike. I will die together TalkChess

***edit***

Engine Progrmming 138 Online 754 Members

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Srdja

[Frank Quisinsky]

https://www.computerbase.de/downloads/k ... n/discord/

This is not very popular on ... I think ... one of the most interesting German IT sites.

Cosmetic features ... is clear!
Avatar und Custom-Emojis
for only a few Dollars.

Exactly this like the younger generation.

Junge, Junge, Junge ...
Allways the same, and if popular the site will be commercial.

Discord, let me watching the news about it for 2 years before I give it a chance.
Sure that such things copy and paste soon and available under an other name, like "Disword".
With the final results ... 50% are on Discord and the other 50% on Disword.

Best
Frank

[smatovic]

...

You miss the point, "it's the people who make the place".

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Srdja

[Frank Quisinsky]

No question / doubt about it.
It does not matter what it is used for ... the most important thing is that people enjoy it.

It has nothing to do with whether I like it or not!
And if many of "our" programmers like it, I think they have a good reason.

Have no experience with Discord and read about it for minutes first time.
What I wrote is my first opinion about it only.
Not such things I am searching / looking for.

[Ciekce]

https://www.computerbase.de/downloads/k ... n/discord/

This is not very popular on ... I think ... one of the most interesting German IT sites.

probably because the correct way to download the client is from the actual discord site, rather than a download aggregator (another relic of internet days gone by)

discord is one of the most popular communication platforms in the world, whether you dismiss it on the basis of being used by people below the age of 90 or not

[lithander]

Funny story about Discord. In 2020 I was supposed to hold a lecture series at the local university. The day before the first lecture I read on the news (no mail from the university at that point, those would come much later) that all universities in Germany are closed due to the pandemic. So I messaged a discord invite link to all students that had signed up for my course and the next morning we did our lecture online. Everybody was there because all you need to attend is a cellphone and the free app.

For the lecture I just shared my screen with the slides with everyone in the same speech channel.
I gave moderation rights to every students so that they could create their own channels and they self organised into groups, used the channels to do group work. When I'd usually go around the room and visit each group I'd now drop into their voice channel and they'd just share their screens.

A week later we meet again and I hear that my lecture was the only thing they had going on in the entire week because all the other's were waiting on the university administration to figure out the technicalities of "E-learning", seeing consultants and buying appropriate software and what-not... actually I don't know when they got that up and running because we had our technical e-learning solution till day one: Discord has everything you need and more importantly every student has Discord. Oh, did I mention the service was completely free the way we used it?