Norm Schmidt .....and the computer chess

[Michael Diosi]

Hi,

Did you read the readme file ? Did you look at the sourcefile ? Did you understand the code ? Did you comapre it with Toga /Fruit code ?

It is silly to test all those engine where only the name and maybe (in best case) evaluation of pawns is changed.

They make some math and the engine output looks different (for some)...

You shouldn't belive those Russians...by now you should know better.



M

[Sylwy]

Hi,

Did you read the readme file ? Did you look at the sourcefile ? Did you understand the code ? Did you comapre it with Toga /Fruit code ?

It is silly to test all those engine where only the name and maybe (in best case) evaluation of pawns is changed.

They make some math and the engine output looks different (for some)...

You shouldn't belive those Russians...by now you should know better.



M

"Hello all,

my name is Raimund Heid and I am the author of Protector. Protector is new to you and I'd like to clarify its relation to Toga/Fruit in order to give you a solid base of information for obvious questions like the one issued by K. Inuen.

When I claimed 'Protector is kinda bitboard-based Toga' I wanted to point out that Protector is based on many ideas implemented in Toga/Fruit. However, you have to keep in mind that Protector was written from scratch (about six years ago) as a bitboard-based program of its own. As a consequence it has a data structure that differs fundamentally from Toga's data structure. And of course Protector's algorithms refer to this data structure. For this reason it doesn't make sense to copy any *code* from Protector to Toga or vice versa.

This could seem to be a problem, but I think it isn't. Experience tells that chess programming is not a matter of coding but a matter of having clever ideas (or copying them ). For this reason in most cases it should't be a big effort to carry successful ideas from one program to the other.

(But, agreed, this still doesn't answer the question why I've written Protector instead of simply enhancing the Toga code. I don't think that this is a topic for the current discussion thread and for this reason I want to give only a short answer here. In fact I saw (and see) only one benefit in the option to start with the Toga code: saving a lot of time. On the other hand I saw a lot of benefits in a new program written from scratch, the most prominent being: 1) When I started with Protector back in 2003 there was no Toga or Fruit around 2) Bitboards. I like Bitboards and I think a modern chess program should be bitboard-based in order to benefit from 64 bit architectures as much as possible. 3) Learning curve. I felt that it's only possible to write a good chess program if you fully understand what's going on. One easy way to get this experience is writing a program from scratch

Coming back to the original question from K. Inuen: I guees it would take about half a day for a decent programmer with profound knowledge of the Toga data structures to attach the tablebase code. I assume the reason why this didn't happen until now is simply the copyright from Eugene Nalimov and Andrew Kadatch, which would't allow the Toga sources to be released any further under GNU licence.

Any questions left? Feel free to ask.

Anyway: Have fun with Protector"

Source:
http://www.computerchess.info/tdbb/phpB ... ?f=9&t=394

Regards,
Silvian

[Michael Diosi]

I see you didn't understood my last sentence, but I don't wonder...
More about all cloners soon at the Arena page.

http://www.playwitharena.com

[Zach Wegner]

Did you look at the sourcefile ? Did you understand the code ? Did you comapre it with Toga /Fruit code ?

Did you? Protector, while it has many Fruit-like components, shares no code with it as far as I can tell from looking through a lot of it.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Did you look at the sourcefile ? Did you understand the code ? Did you comapre it with Toga /Fruit code ?

Did you? Protector, while it has many Fruit-like components, shares no code with it as far as I can tell from looking through a lot of it.

Just to add that Protector is almost equal in strength to StockFish 1.4 from the first quick test I run,so it must be a significant improvement....
BTW,another neglected engine is Toga The Killer,damn strong,I am currently running a big tournament on my quad machine with amazing results so far....
Dr.D

[Michael Diosi]

Yes.
It's a clone.

[Michael Diosi]

Did you try the newest very strong engine called Vegetable ? You should.

[Michael Diosi]

Sorry, the fact that Zach is saying he looke d at it found out that is not a proof either, it's a statement.


I will publish all the ncessary info at the Arena page:

http://www.playwitharena.com


soon. If this is what you want instead of Arena relevant info.

Fafis
Patriot
Oxygen
...

If you want to waste your time go on. Why don't you test the original engines form http://www.excatachess.com ?

[Guenther]

Did you look at the sourcefile ? Did you understand the code ? Did you comapre it with Toga /Fruit code ?

Did you? Protector, while it has many Fruit-like components, shares no code with it as far as I can tell from looking through a lot of it.

Did you also compare with parts of Strelka, Belka, Cyclops, Cyclone and
with parts of the Glaurung/Viper/Stockfish family?

Guenther

[Graham Banks]

Sorry, the fact that Zach is saying he looke d at it found out that is not a proof either, it's a statement.


I will publish all the ncessary info at the Arena page:

http://www.playwitharena.com

I'm not agreeing one way or the other at present because I'm not a programmer. However, I thought that the moderators had agreed that clone claims were not allowed in CCC without proof being posted here to back up the claim.

Cheers,
Graham.