OpenChess

Computer Chess as it should be

Post Today at 2:00 pm by Olivier Deville
THE COMPUTER CHESS AS IT SHOULD BE

Computer chess as it should be, from our point of view.

Chess is a competitive field. And so is computer chess. You try to win as many games as you can. You learn from your mistakes, and you try to improve your skills, so that you will score better in the next event.

Chess is also an open field. You can study the games of every living or dead Grandmaster, they are free for everyone to see. And there are thousands of chess books where all chess techniques are explained. Nothing is hidden.

Computer chess is a bit different.

You can study the games of Capablanca or Kasparov, but you cannot borrow a parcel of their brain. And this is exactly what people do when they copy/paste a part of an open source chess program.

When a programmer studies the source of a chess engine written by somebody else, and implements the ideas his own way for his own chess engine, he is doing the same thing as a chess player who reads a book written by a master, and learns some patterns that will be useful for his future games.

We would prefer computer chess to follow the same natural way chess does. I have stopped using engines that are not an original work of their authors. When I chat with programmers who are following my broadcasts, I can feel the pride when they win, and the sorrow when they lose. Their engine is like their offspring. They wrote it by themselves, putting in it hours and hours of hard work, with the help of ideas and techniques that are known to the whole community.

Where is the pride if your engine is some kind of chimera? Well you found the name, and you tweaked some settings. Is that enough?