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Subject: Re: Tony Marsland and Chinese Chess in Maastricht (slightly O.T.)

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 17:07:05 07/30/02

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On July 30, 2002 at 17:30:53, Ren Wu wrote:

The strength of a game is also determined by how many professional
players a game has. We see it clearly in tennis and table tennis how
a sport from very amateuristic level has developed in a very professional
scene. This definitely is the case with chess.

If i see how many nodes a second you get in chinese chess and see
the average number of possibilities (which in chess is 40 exactly
i measured with DIEP, not 35 like it is in human games), and the
huge influence of both scientists and other researchers in the
field then the facts are pretty easy.

Let's be clear here. How many parallel running chinese chess programs
are there?

If little, why? Especially if you consider the search depths they get,
for the top programs to play another top program, getting 2 ply more
is pretty interesting.

Branching factor is determined by a few things
  a) quality of the program
  b) number of possibilities

The go programmers at the mailing list always complain about branching
factor, yet my GO program has from the openings position a branching
factor of 10.0

Of course using nullmove.

Yet they claim way higher branching factors.

In chess we had a few years ago the same thing. Huge branching factors.
Now we have way smaller branching factors in chess, after years of
hard work.

In all ways computerchess has developed itself very professional. Claiming
there is no such a gap between chess and Xiangqi is in itself a complete
denial of the facts.

Let me show you one reason why many game developers in the east are suffering
from problems:
  - not being able to speak english

As a result of that i can't remember many serious papers regarding Xiangqi.
Please explain to me one algorithm that in generally works (both chess AND
Xiangqi are very similar, of course mating the king is completely different
in both games, so will extensions be here) for both games which has
been developed by a Xiangqi researcher?

I'm sure if i just look to hashtable management of the programs, i already
can directly find fixes for them. Simply not knowing cache line sizes
and such...

>On July 30, 2002 at 16:13:59, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>I do not express an opinion about comparing computer chess and computer chinese
>>chess but comparison with humans is not a convincing argument.
>
>I am not sure what is the better alternative?
>
>>There are games that you need less effort to be at around 100th in the world.
>>I do not know if chinese chess is one of them.
>
>Well, will you say that you were not sure if chess is one of them?
>
>Xiangqi have at least as many players as chess, if not more.
>Xiangqi is little more complex, both in state space and game tree, than chess
>mathmaticly. You can take a look at allis' thesis and recent paper by Herik et
>al published in Artificial Intelligence.
>
>Do you know any other game that met these two conditions and still is easier to
>get world 100th place?
>
>Ren.



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