Author: Thomas McBurney
Date: 07:25:58 04/23/04
Go up one level in this thread
> >i did not notice that! >i just tried this out and you are right! >:)) > >can i ask you ,what made you try this out?? > to see if it would make illegal moves,or did you just press the play button by >accident after the game and you noticed this?? >great observation! I guess the thing that caught my attention was the way the computer missed checkmate moves. In one example, the computer only had a choice of about 30 possible moves and one of those moves lead to checkmate. It only requires a 1 ply search (+ qsearch) to find the checkmate move. After it thought about its move for about 10 seconds it made a move that wasn't the checkmate move. So I thought there was something odd with the way it performs its search. I think you hit on it below, it doesn't appear to perform a iterative deepening search. It must perform a 2 or 3 ply search without searching at the lower depths first, then it simply runs out of time before it has finished searching all the possible legal moves. I thought that because of the way it did its search I thought that it might behave funny in a stalemate position (notice no stalemate LEDs) or checkmate position. And to my surprise after fiddling with it, I was able to play a move and remove the king off the board and continue playing. The Hanimex Computachess II also does not appear to use interative deepening. Unlike the Fidelity, it will continue to think until it has considered all moves. That probably explains why the levels are strange with this unit. On level 3 it takes an average of 15 seconds to make a move, then one level up, level 4, it takes an average of 3 minutes to make a move! Quite a jump from level 3 to level 4! Also, another interesting thing with the Hanimex is in its instruction manual it has a little note that says "On those very rare occasions when you are easily winning but accidentally make a move that Stalemates the computer, it will show its surprise by indicating an illegal or impossible move". I think this is actually a bug which they are pretending is a feature. When you are working with a psuedo legal move generator dectecting the difference between Stalemate and Checkmate is a little bit tricky, then throw in non iterative deepening search algorithm then I can see a potential for a silly bug to creep in. Well, thats my guess anyway! :) >probably just the way the program allocates time >it probably spent alot of time on the earlier moves and had little allocated >time left..so it made a move with a small 1 or 2 ply look ahead..resulting in >diaster >i would call this a nice "chess ego building feature " >:)) > >BTW... Fidelity released 3 plug-in modules for the Mini >if you open up the back of the unit you will see an empty slot for the modules >one of the modules was the CAC(Advanced chess module) which increased the number >of levels to 8 and made the program slightly stronger > >keep an eye out for these modules on Ebay >every now and again one of them pops up Yes, I noticed that, it has a sticker that says "use Z8 series plug in module only". I will have to keep an eye out on ebay for one! BTW, do you have the manual for this unit? I don't, but I would like to know what specs are for the external power supply because I would like to buy one for it so I don't have to use batteries. Cheers, Tom.
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