Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Zappa web update & a few other things

Author: A. Cozzie

Date: 07:21:03 08/28/05

Go up one level in this thread


On August 28, 2005 at 09:23:15, Peter Berger wrote:

>Thanks for your very nice tournament report. It's nice to hear that you go
>commercial although it will be hard to get used to this gay teddy ;) .
>
>Joking aside.
>
>---
>
>Concerning "sceptical programs" and my alleged quote ( that I don't remember
>just like that ;) ) . I don't know how useful that term is ( and I am sceptical
>about it :) ) , but there is something serious about it. The major contender in
>this group is certainly Fruit right now. Professionals have become very
>speculative about material in recent years, and I think they might have overdone
>it at times. Zappa is not very sceptical either.

Ah, if I didn't get the quote right you can post the correct one and I'll fix
it.

I think the commercials are simply tuned to beat amatuers.  To win an 11 round
swiss tournament usually takes 8.5/11 or more, which means scoring _really well_
against the bottom half.  And winning with Black especially is getting really
hard.  You have to be speculative to mix it up a bit and give them a position
where they can make mistakes.

Shredder, Junior, and Diep are all _very_ aggressive.  Fruit is actually pretty
aggressive, but not on kingsafety.  Crafty I feel is usually a bit too passive.
Zappa tries to walk the fine line of 'correctness' between Junior and
Crafty/Fruit.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

>I am currently playing a big series of games between Fruit and Junior for fun
>who play at nearly the exact same level, but reach their aims in very different
>ways. Speculative vs sceptical is a term that fits quite well IMHO. Very
>fascinating games btw, I'll probably post some later.
>--
>
>The "Strategy of Attack" ( trademark Futé and  Jean-Louis Boussin) . Yes, this
>one was a bit funny, but maybe there should be at least a little explanation on
>what it is about. I'll try.
>
>From what I understood Futé does some complicated static evaluation at the root
>position (pre-processing) to guide the search and trigger some search extensions
>(his strategies). So far there were only two implemented in the program, the
>"strategy of attack" and the "strategy of defense" ( that was not really working
>well yet according to the author).
>
>Usually Futé's search lacked some depth so that it was outsearched quite often
>in games. Now when the "Strategy of Attack" kicked in ( as far as I understood
>triggered by the number of pieces directed against the opponent's king mainly) ,
>Futé managed to search some lines a lot deeper. This is what happened in the
>Zappa game for all I know.
>The vagueness is not due to lack of explanations by Futé's author but more by my
>ignorance. *No one* could complain about Jean-Louis Boussin not talking and
>explaining enough ;) ) .
>
>In practice that led to the Futé's author looking at his screen and always
>hoping that at some point the "strategy of attack" would kick in . E.g. it
>happened once in the game Crafty-Futé - unfortunately in a position where there
>was already a mate in 3 against Futé .
>
>Peter



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.