Hello all

[DaveKitt]

Thanks Tom! Glad to know that you had fun w/Supper Constellation. Also that it still works after all these years!
Dave

[pichy]

Hello David,

You don't know me but I just wanted to express my gratitude for your early work
in computer chess programming. I can't begin to say how many hours of pleasure
your program in the Novag Super Constellation gave me. I still have it and it still
works!!

Definitely one of my treasured mementos.

regards,
--tom

I also would like to express my gratitud,e since Nova Citrine was one of my first chess companion and a good one the gave me a very hard time to beat, ( I might be the first one to admit that it is still a great challenger for me)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHBw2US2qpM

[Andre van Ark]

Dave, are there any plans for W-chess UCI? I always enjoyed the playingstyle of your programs.

Best wishes,

Andre van Ark

[DaveKitt]

At this time I would doubt it. Appreciate your enjoying the play style of my programs, goal was always to give a good game, not necessarily the 'best' game.
Dave

[gleperlier]

At this time I would doubt it. Appreciate your enjoying the play style of my programs, goal was always to give a good game, not necessarily the 'best' game.
Dave

Hi Dave,

So now it's some days that you came "back" to our addiction, did you already decide your next direction or are you still thinking, have you different temptations ?

Best wishes,

Gab

[Michael Sherwin]

20 ply or more, yes, that is the reason I do not play those monsters which does not give any chance to you.
BTW, my second beloved dedicated unit -after my first love, Champion Chess challenger- , was a Constellation 3.6, which I played a lot, lost a lot, won a lot, etc. I remember a mate I got with a deep search of 16 moves on my side. Probably the moment when my chess brain got his best...
After lot of years I got a Superconny and there I have most of my current pleasures. And I have other contrivances coming from your mind, David, as some little hand held units that play even better than SC. Saphire, one of them.
They are strong and I lose lot of games, BUt you always have some chance to get a point or half a point. They go deep, but not THAT deep as these PC monsters.
As Steven B, I get most of my fun from those units which I collect to this day. And I feel, talking to you, as some of my readers feel, I suppose, talking to me when I am in the old exercise of signing books. Feel happy and weird, that is...
One of the charms of this place has been precisely that: I have known Martin Bryant, ed Schroeder, Bob, Don, Larry, sherwin and so many others chess programmers that to me, sometime, where kind of Olympus gods far above my head.
Now I just stopped a game againts wchess which was in state of equilibrium. Thats the moment to stop...

Fern

Thank you Fern for including me in such a group in as great a place as Mount Olympus! And I freely admit that I am there and deserve to be there. But I assure you that I am only the janitor!

[DaveKitt]

Fern,
I do agree, the new PC programs really aren't much fun to play against because there is just no chance, and not really a chance to understand why you are losing. I have just been running the old set of 11 Nolot very tough problems on Stockfish. Stockfish solves all (except pos #9, in which Stockfish sees the better Nxh6 rather than Ng5 which probably leads to draw).Some in seconds, few in minutes, and only a couple in hours. Simply amazing for a computer. When I left the field many of these would have taken weeks, months or even years to solve.

Some of the great things from my time in the field was being able to spend a small amount of time with Ken Thompson (who I see works for google now?!), playing a game vs Julio Kaplan (world Junior Champ before Karpov), compete for a world championship and many others.

After reading over the threads regarding the 60% rule and tournament qualification, I can say that that things have changed a great deal. There has been so much published code that I've seen, whether it has been RE'd or not, that the genie really is out of the bottle. I think it will be very difficult to ever find a solution for determining what is sufficiently 'original' and what has too much 'borrow' in it.

I am curious if anyone is still making any money with this activity. If not, then maybe tournaments should just open the gates to all, regardless of program lineage.

[gleperlier]

Fern,
I do agree, the new PC programs really aren't much fun to play against because there is just no chance, and not really a chance to understand why you are losing. I have just been running the old set of 11 Nolot very tough problems on Stockfish. Stockfish solves all (except pos #9, in which Stockfish sees the better Nxh6 rather than Ng5 which probably leads to draw).Some in seconds, few in minutes, and only a couple in hours. Simply amazing for a computer. When I left the field many of these would have taken weeks, months or even years to solve.

Some of the great things from my time in the field was being able to spend a small amount of time with Ken Thompson (who I see works for google now?!), playing a game vs Julio Kaplan (world Junior Champ before Karpov), compete for a world championship and many others.

After reading over the threads regarding the 60% rule and tournament qualification, I can say that that things have changed a great deal. There has been so much published code that I've seen, whether it has been RE'd or not, that the genie really is out of the bottle. I think it will be very difficult to ever find a solution for determining what is sufficiently 'original' and what has too much 'borrow' in it.

I am curious if anyone is still making any money with this activity. If not, then maybe tournaments should just open the gates to all, regardless of program lineage.

Listen the wise man all

Thanks Dave !

Gab

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Fern,
I do agree, the new PC programs really aren't much fun to play against because there is just no chance, and not really a chance to understand why you are losing. I have just been running the old set of 11 Nolot very tough problems on Stockfish. Stockfish solves all (except pos #9, in which Stockfish sees the better Nxh6 rather than Ng5 which probably leads to draw).Some in seconds, few in minutes, and only a couple in hours. Simply amazing for a computer. When I left the field many of these would have taken weeks, months or even years to solve.

Some of the great things from my time in the field was being able to spend a small amount of time with Ken Thompson (who I see works for google now?!), playing a game vs Julio Kaplan (world Junior Champ before Karpov), compete for a world championship and many others.

After reading over the threads regarding the 60% rule and tournament qualification, I can say that that things have changed a great deal. There has been so much published code that I've seen, whether it has been RE'd or not, that the genie really is out of the bottle. I think it will be very difficult to ever find a solution for determining what is sufficiently 'original' and what has too much 'borrow' in it.

I am curious if anyone is still making any money with this activity. If not, then maybe tournaments should just open the gates to all, regardless of program lineage.

Listen the wise man all

Thanks Dave !

Gab

I second that

[mclane]

I am curious if anyone is still making any money with this activity. If not, then maybe tournaments should just open the gates to all, regardless of program lineage.

I do HOPE that some people are still making money.

I wish this for all the friends i met in computerchess, programmers.

I wish that Stefan Meyer Kahlen will sell his new Shredder for PC soon.
And that Mark Uniacke will also soon publish the new Hiarcs for PC.

Also there are many programmers still doing computerchess for Tablet-PCs/mobiles. e.g. Richard Lang has converted his program GENIUS on many platforms and sells it for Android devices and IOS-devices and windows stuff.
http://www.chessgenius.com/


Christophe Theron still sells his Chess-Tiger as an app for IOS.

there are also still many dedicated chess computers sold on ebay.
or from private people.

a few weeks ago e.g. i bought a nice novag machine called
novag turquoise



which has a a H8 CPU.
I especially liked the design of that machine, a big board and a display and the keys nicely arround the display.

I still think novag could have rescued themselves if they would have sold the 2 robot


with the super constellation program instead of a 4 KB rom program
using only 736 bytes ram.

the superconstellation would have made much sense in such a robot machine because superconstellation played very human like with all those sacrifices. but instead a 4 KB program ???

there are so many nice projects in the computerchess scene in the moment... e.g. the mess emulator where people emulate dedicated chess computers on PC hardware such as Mephisto MM4 or MM5 running as UCI engines under arena.

or the mysticum chess project, where people build their own chess computer

http://www.miclangschach.de/index.php?n=Main.Mysticum

running UCI engines on self made machines with PC hardware .

see e.g.


there are also other self made machines such as the elektor chess computer:



i would like to see e.g. superconstellation ported to this device



other people concentrate e.g. by reprogramming the Saitek
Leonardo / Galileo / renaissance machines with the BOSAL language to use UCI engines on those chess boards. and the information of the UCI engine is beeing shown on the LCD of the saitek machine.
this is amazing.


computerchess is still unbelievable to me. its still amazing !
it still hits me day by day although so much time has gone and
all computerchess companies have died .

still today there are plenty of interesting things.

this is not the end guys.

the adventure continues. and i am very happy that we still have creative
people arround doing all kind of new things.

the cloning issue is only a small part of computerchess.