what is left in computer chess programming

[kgburcham]

It seems we have run out of ideas in improving programs.
Everyone has run out of tune ideas.
There are no other programs left to get ideas from.
Most of the programmers are tired or retired or out of ideas.

One time I thought Shredder was amazing.
Then I thought Tiger was amazing.
When Rybka came along I was amazed by its moves.
Then Houdini comes along and can beat Rybka.
Then Stockfish with it crazy eval wins some.

I wonder what programs in the next few years will top what we have now.
I wonder what improvements it will take for programs to play better than what we have now.
It will take someone with a lot of energy and dedication and a lot of time to improve what we have now.
The improvements in the next few years will be interesting.
Maybe all of the program buying suckers will buy the $29.95 programs with just an improvement of 5 elo with each new release.
I think I will just move to Denver.

kgburcham

[hgm]

That is because you are talking about orthodox Chess, a game that has been beaten to death. You would do well to expand your horizon, because almost anything else is much more interesting. Steak is nice, but who still wants to eat a steak that has been chewed to the bone?

[Henk]

That is because you are talking about orthodox Chess, a game that has been beaten to death. You would do well to expand your horizon, because almost anything else is much more interesting. Steak is nice, but who still wants to eat a steak that has been chewed to the bone?

Doesn't it hold for each function to be optimized. The closer you get to the optimum the more time it takes to find an improvement. So huge computing power is needed to find next improvement if we don't want to wait long.

[Graham Banks]

That is because you are talking about orthodox Chess, a game that has been beaten to death. You would do well to expand your horizon, because almost anything else is much more interesting. Steak is nice, but who still wants to eat a steak that has been chewed to the bone?

Orthodox chess still excites me!

[arjuntemurnikar]

I think the next frontier for computer chess is increasing the efficiency of parallel search and GPU chess.

If we can get engines to effectively use the GPU, then a whole new world opens up.

[mvk]

It seems we have run out of ideas in improving programs.
Everyone has run out of tune ideas.
There are no other programs left to get ideas from.
Most of the programmers are tired or retired or out of ideas.

One time I thought Shredder was amazing.
Then I thought Tiger was amazing.
When Rybka came along I was amazed by its moves.
Then Houdini comes along and can beat Rybka.
Then Stockfish with it crazy eval wins some.

I wonder what programs in the next few years will top what we have now.
I wonder what improvements it will take for programs to play better than what we have now.

Next is to remove the programmer from the program.

[gerold]

That is because you are talking about orthodox Chess, a game that has been beaten to death. You would do well to expand your horizon, because almost anything else is much more interesting. Steak is nice, but who still wants to eat a steak that has been chewed to the bone?

Orthodox chess still excites me!

50 years and still exciting.

[Dan Honeycutt]

That is because you are talking about orthodox Chess, a game that has been beaten to death. You would do well to expand your horizon, because almost anything else is much more interesting. Steak is nice, but who still wants to eat a steak that has been chewed to the bone?

Orthodox chess still excites me!

50 years and still exciting.

Gerold and Graham,

I'm with you. I've tried other variations, they seem kind of neat for a while but then the novelty wears off and I always return to the old tried and true.

Best
Dan H.

[Evert]

I'm with you. I've tried other variations, they seem kind of neat for a while but then the novelty wears off and I always return to the old tried and true.

Most of them are a bit meh, there's a couple that are interesting. Mostly regional or historical games. Capablanca (including Gothic) is interesting and so are regional games like Xiang-Qi and Shogi (though I never really got into the latter). Makruk is probably more interesting than I tend to think it is (the queen is so weak that I find the game a bit boring).

As an example for a modern fairy variant that is rather interesting I'll bring up Spartan.

Of course, these games all suffer because as a human you don't have a good feel for how to play them (because you don't have the same feel for the pieces as you do for normal chess) and it's hard to find a human to play them with (this actually made me write a program to play Xiang-Qi). Perhaps that's why FRC is relatively popular.

The other side of the coin is that computers aren't as strong as regular chess programs either.

In the end there's no right and wrong in this discussion, of course. As a hobby, anyone is free to choose what they enjoy most.

[WinPooh]

At last, one always can switch to Go.