A personal introduction

[Steelman]

Hello everyone;

My name is Ron, and I wanted to give myself a brief introduction and a little personal background hopefully without boring anyone in the process.

My first PC was a TI-99A with about 16K ram, with a cassette player for the I/O storage and a TV for a monitor. I'm sure some of the "older" members remember it. The language was basic. Checkers was the first game I programmed on it and when my friends came over to visit someone always wanted to play it. The program did well (only because they were bad). Trying to write a chess program on it or the Commodore 64 which followed the TI was a hopeless challenge. And I was not going to try to learn assembler.

Finally in the early 80's (maybe mid 80's) I started working for a company with a "mini-mainframe" running UNIX. With the help of some of the programmers working there I learned C. I loved it! Finally I found a combination of hardware and software (and of course speed) better suited to writing a chess program (Thank you Ken Thompson). In my spare time I put a chess program together. I had stumbled on a paper written for a program which played checkers using the mini-max and alpha-beta algorithm which I somehow managed to get working in my program. I remember being surprised that my crude "home made" program could beat Fidelity's Chess Challenger most of the time. (Sorry but it was the only thing I had at the time!).

Marriage, children, life, work, etc. stopped me from getting back into any real chess programming until about 4 years ago. So now I am finally at it again. Wow what a wealth of information on computer chess available today! Books, internet, forums like this one, etc. I had found this forum some time ago but lost it. Then I found it again and here I am.

So I now almost have a program which can play again. At present no bit boards, no hash tables, and with lots of other stuff missing. But it is slowly getting there.

One last thing! A very strong thank you to Bob Hyatt who I remember reading about years ago in "Computer Chess" by David Welsh. One of the pioneers of computer chess who is still at it! A couple of days I down loaded the source code for Crafty and have just begun to look it over. I'm sure it will be helpful in my efforts. It seems to be well commented. Thanks so much for sharing the actual source code with everyone. And to Ed Schroeder's web site on programming Rebel which re-started my interest in chess programming. Ed have you updated anything past the Mobility section yet? I'm really looking forward to it since my evaluator does not have anything on mobility yet and it really needs it?

Hopefully this was not too boring and again Thanks
.....Ron Peterson

[ed]

And to Ed Schroeder's web site on programming Rebel which re-started my interest in chess programming. Ed have you updated anything past the Mobility section yet? I'm really looking forward to it since my evaluator does not have anything on mobility yet and it really needs it?
.....Ron Peterson

Welcome Ron,

It's maybe a good idea to continue were I stopped a couple of years ago, indeed with mobility. Okay, gimme some time, it's not my favorite activity, quite time consuming too.

Ed

[Steelman]

Thanks Ed, I'm looking forward to it.......Ron P.

PS I hate "spec. writing" too.

[mjlef]

I see Ed added stuff for pawn evaulations to his great Rebel writeup. Now I owe him at least 2 nice meals! Great stuff. Thanks Ed!

http://www.top-5000.nl/authors/rebel/chess840.htm

I cannot wait for the Passed Pawn stuff. I think that will land him a lobster and steak!

Mark

[Tony]

I see Ed added stuff for pawn evaulations to his great Rebel writeup. Now I owe him at least 2 nice meals! Great stuff. Thanks Ed!

http://www.top-5000.nl/authors/rebel/chess840.htm

I cannot wait for the Passed Pawn stuff. I think that will land him a lobster and steak!

Mark

Strange parts is that I had a discussion about this here with Ed last night !?

How long does this servermove keeps eating posts ?

Tony