Final, definitive Post about Nelson....

[Monsieur Plastique]

You just take a line of code or two, the kind of things that clone makers does or even less, and you have a better program.

I don't think a line or two is going to put a dedicated machine into the next playing category - which is effectively what we are talking about when we compare the GM to the other Nelson programs - unless that line happens to fix an extremely significant bug.

On the other hand, I can imagine that taking code from other programs - particularly something as spectacular sounding Spraklen Attack Tables - might be analogous to putting a turbocharged Formula Toyota open wheeler competition engine into a base model road going Corolla. In other words, it is not only not the some car after that. It's no longer remotely like the original at all.

[mclane]

The reason Igor and gm are stronger then fidelity sensory voice is the faster hardware and the bigger opening book and the much faster CPU. Also permanent brain is important.

Z80a versus h8 CPU.

[Monsieur Plastique]

I'm not sure who you were replying to (if anyone specific) but the only machines I have been directly comparing in terms of performance versus hardware are the last generation (and in my view undisputed wholly Nelson created engines and machines) such Deluxe Talking Touch Chess / Alexandra versus the one I continue dispute as wholly authored by Nelson (GM). All these machines are 32K ROM running an H8 processor at between 10 and 12 Mhz with 1 KB RAM. I believe that is a fairly accurate summation of the hardware however if I am wrong here it is only slightly and not of any material significance in terms of advancing my argument.

As has already been stated, the GM has a private rating of 1772 after a very large number of 40 in 2 games against a variety of comparable opponents. That is on the "old" SSDF scale where the MMIV rated 1904. On that same rating list the Mephisto Europa rated at 1683. In a 10 game formal 40 in 2 match between Deluxe Talking Touch Chess and Mephisto Europa, the Nelson machine went down 1.5 to 8.5 to this 1683 rated machine.

Whilst I have never exhaustively rated these Nelson machines (on the other hand, I don't think anyone has played more than 100 x 40 in 2 games using these machines against comparable opponents), I can still report poor individual match results like the above as well as an extremely poor record against myself as a player (I believe I am in the high 1600s to low 1700s). Infact their record against me is about the same as the results in that Europa match.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that the best of the programs that I happily attribute wholly to Nelson are at least a full class (i.e. 200 points) below the playing strength of the GM, even when playing strength is adjusted for the hardware (which at best is a round a 20% speed difference - worth maybe 20 points or so). This situation is an impossible one for me to explain satisfactorally unless the GM machine engine was authored by a third party, or (yes, I will concede this), an extremely significant and important - if not critical - part of the engine was provided by a third party and only the much more mundane parts that have little effect on playing strength and playing "character" were authored by Nelson. Which when it comes down to it still makes the argument that Nelson authored the GM as tenuous and misleading in the extreme. I am happy to concede he played the role of systems and hardware programming and I have never disputed this.

[spacious_mind]

The reason Igor and gm are stronger then fidelity sensory voice is the faster hardware and the bigger opening book and the much faster CPU. Also permanent brain is important.

Z80a versus h8 CPU.

Hi Thorsten,

I really wish that we could find some middle ground to agree. But I still struggle to find it

As far as I know the difference in speed between a H8 and Z80 4 MHz is about the same difference or less then playing a H8 at 30 seconds and the Z80 4 MHz at 3 minutes per move.

I have played tests with Sensory Voice at even 6 minutes per move to try and follow this Nelson possibility. It lacks knowledge in every single aspect of the game.

My god it is like saying take the 1980 C64 Sargon II software program add Krypton features and play levels. add Attack Tables and put it into a H8 and now you have a 2000 ELO computer. It would not work for Sargon II either in spite me thinking that this is a much better written program.

The only program of that era that remotely has a chance of getting to this 2000 ELO magic number is ARB Sargon 4 from 1984 where it lies as a 16 MHz computer at ELO 1924 at Schachcomputer Info.

There is nothing that you can do to Sensory Voice to make it play at 2000 ELO without starting from scratch writing a totally new program. Opening, middle game, end game nothing is up to standard or useful to bring this 1980 program to 2000 ELO, IMO.

As common ground of understanding do you agree from the table below that Mirage = Igor? Yes or No?

Mirage - Igor Comparison



Best regards

[Steve B]

I have been directly comparing in terms of performance versus hardware are the last generation (and in my view undisputed wholly Nelson created engines and machines) such Deluxe Talking Touch Chess / Alexandra versus the one I continue dispute as wholly authored by Nelson (GM).
.

Well we seem to be finally making some headway here
"undisputed wholly Nelson created engines" is a departure from another theory posted here that no engines for Excalibur were written by Nelson at all and this after the V.P. of the company himself stated he did
also I seem to see a small crack in the armor where you might be coming around to the line of thinking that perhaps Nelson wrote at least some of the GM code but not all of it

Perhaps Some Light Is Emerging From the Darkness Regards
Steve

[spacious_mind]

I have been directly comparing in terms of performance versus hardware are the last generation (and in my view undisputed wholly Nelson created engines and machines) such Deluxe Talking Touch Chess / Alexandra versus the one I continue dispute as wholly authored by Nelson (GM).
.

Well we seem to be finally making some headway here
"undisputed wholly Nelson created engines" is a departure from another theory posted here that no engines for Excalibur were written by Nelson at all and this after the V.P. of the company himself stated he did
also I seem to see a small crack in the armor where you might be coming around to the line of thinking that perhaps Nelson wrote at least some of the GM code but not all of it

Perhaps Some Light Is Emerging From the Darkness Regards
Steve

Still Mix and Matching who did what Steve

SPRACKLEN ATTACK TABLES regards

[spacious_mind]

As common ground of understanding do you agree from the table below that Mirage = Igor? Yes or No?

Is there anybody out there that has the spunk to stand up and say "Yes based on the table shown in the previous post it is fair to conclude that Igor has the 100% identical program authorship as Mirage"?

Now that would be a first small step for Mankind!

Best regards

[Monsieur Plastique]

Well we seem to be finally making some headway here
"undisputed wholly Nelson created engines" is a departure from another theory posted here that no engines for Excalibur were written by Nelson at all and this after the V.P. of the company himself stated he did
also I seem to see a small crack in the armor where you might be coming around to the line of thinking that perhaps Nelson wrote at least some of the GM code but not all of it

Absolutely. I am happy to concede this possibility (I would even now go so far as to call it a strong probability) simply because it makes a lot of sense and is consistent with everything I know about the way the programs and machines perform. I honestly did not previously consider that perhaps it might be a "hybrid", but after reading Cameron's post today it makes sense and also still explains the strength discrepancy.

That said, as Nick points out, it still becomes a debatable point as to what might have been used and what effect it had on the program / engine. To go back to the car analogy, it could be like saying that Toyota could be credited for creating the LFS via it's Lexus automobile arm, but the purest knows all too well that Yamaha had so much to do with the powerplant and tuning of that car that it largely defines it.

The GM and clones play at a much stronger level than the other programs. I would estimate around 200 points. That is a huge difference on the same hardware and an especially significant difference at these sorts of ELO levels. For such a huge difference in playing strength, the engine would have to be massively modified and improved if it was based on Nelson's own code.

What are these "Attack Tables" anyway? They could be anything from a few algorithms here and there in certain positions right the way through to basically the entire engine apart from those sections of it that deal with the I/O, piece recognition, rules of chess and move generation!

But yes it could be a situation where in the end we are both right. I am not going to argue with anyone who wants to claim that the GM engine was created with Nelson as a co-author with another programmer who had significantly superior chess engine programming skills to Nelson

[Monsieur Plastique]

Is there anybody out there that has the spunk to stand up and say "Yes based on the table shown in the previous post it is fair to conclude that Igor has the 100% identical program authorship as Mirage"?

Yes. Mankind has apparently just taken another small step. To where?

[Steve B]

Well we seem to be finally making some headway here
"undisputed wholly Nelson created engines" is a departure from another theory posted here that no engines for Excalibur were written by Nelson at all and this after the V.P. of the company himself stated he did
also I seem to see a small crack in the armor where you might be coming around to the line of thinking that perhaps Nelson wrote at least some of the GM code but not all of it

Absolutely. I am happy to concede this possibility (I would even now go so far as to call it a strong probability) simply because it makes a lot of sense and is consistent with everything I know about the way the programs and machines perform. I honestly did not previously consider that perhaps it might be a "hybrid", but after reading Cameron's post today it makes sense and also still explains the strength discrepancy.

Excellent
Finally Regards
Steve

[spacious_mind]

Well we seem to be finally making some headway here
"undisputed wholly Nelson created engines" is a departure from another theory posted here that no engines for Excalibur were written by Nelson at all and this after the V.P. of the company himself stated he did
also I seem to see a small crack in the armor where you might be coming around to the line of thinking that perhaps Nelson wrote at least some of the GM code but not all of it

Absolutely. I am happy to concede this possibility (I would even now go so far as to call it a strong probability) simply because it makes a lot of sense and is consistent with everything I know about the way the programs and machines perform. I honestly did not previously consider that perhaps it might be a "hybrid", but after reading Cameron's post today it makes sense and also still explains the strength discrepancy.

Excellent
Finally Regards
Steve

Hi Monsieur,

I agree, you made a stand which goes back to some previous posts I made regarding Split personality and pick one GM, Igor, Mirage etc or the later models. Your stand is later models.

You are the first person to make a stand. It still remains to be proven and too few have been tested but progress has been made

Best regards

[spacious_mind]

Is there anybody out there that has the spunk to stand up and say "Yes based on the table shown in the previous post it is fair to conclude that Igor has the 100% identical program authorship as Mirage"?

Yes. Mankind has apparently just taken another small step. To where?

Posts continuously reference Igor & GM without reference to the father Mirage. This alludes to differences or modifications in the chess program itself. This admission confirms there are no differences in the chess program between Mirage & Igor, therefore the next tests would be Mirage/Igor versus GM and not Mirage vs Igor/GM. A small step has been made.

Also it is like pulling teeth to have people acknowledge this. I have asked and yet to hear it. I want to hear a YES from Thorsten and a YES from Steve

And then we can test Grandmaster

Best regards
Best regards

[klute]

6) Might it be possible that Nelson's words are being incorrectly quoted or misinterpreted by mistaking programming or end product author (there is no doubt that he single handedly put most of the pieces together at Excalibur, especially in later years. At the beginning NO since Excalibur started as a Distributor) with the word chess engine author? In his statement did he mean "I am the author of the chess engine"? or did he mean "I am the Author/Creator of the finished product"? As in the case of GM?

Hi Nick

I've read through your post and there's a lot of stuff you're asking. In the first instance let's start with your item 6) because in one sense I broadly agree with you, yet in another sense I feel you might at least partly be contradicting yourself.

Where I tend to agree with you if I understand what you're trying to get at, is that yes, most non-trivial software / hardware projects are a team effort. I know you know that and I think most people here also realise that.

The way life works, fair or not, is that it's typically the "team leader" (the one who leads, co-ordinates, orchestrates but also does at least a portion of the nuts-and-bolts, hands-on stuff) who will be credited with being "the programmer" of the end result. They will usually be older, more experienced, paid more and so on, and you have to draw the line somewhere when making attributions on a box or in a manual. The more junior members of the team who have made worthwhile contributions to individual aspects of the program, will often remain anonymous.

Now while I admire your scientific method in trying to determine "the truth" about the "engine author" for many Excalibur products in particular, I do feel that, no matter how hard you pursue this, you will quite possibly never be able to derive entirely satisfactory conclusions for all of them - there are so many fingers in so many pies of so many models in more recent dedicated chess computer history.

Detection of clones however generally is a more straightforward matter.

Regards

Cameron

[spacious_mind]

6) Might it be possible that Nelson's words are being incorrectly quoted or misinterpreted by mistaking programming or end product author (there is no doubt that he single handedly put most of the pieces together at Excalibur, especially in later years. At the beginning NO since Excalibur started as a Distributor) with the word chess engine author? In his statement did he mean "I am the author of the chess engine"? or did he mean "I am the Author/Creator of the finished product"? As in the case of GM?

Hi Nick

I've read through your post and there's a lot of stuff you're asking. In the first instance let's start with your item 6) because in one sense I broadly agree with you, yet in another sense I feel you might at least partly be contradicting yourself.

Where I tend to agree with you if I understand what you're trying to get at, is that yes, most non-trivial software / hardware projects are a team effort. I know you know that and I think most people here also realise that.

The way life works, fair or not, is that it's typically the "team leader" (the one who leads, co-ordinates, orchestrates but also does at least a portion of the nuts-and-bolts, hands-on stuff) who will be credited with being "the programmer" of the end result. They will usually be older, more experienced, paid more and so on, and you have to draw the line somewhere when making attributions on a box or in a manual. The more junior members of the team who have made worthwhile contributions to individual aspects of the program, will often remain anonymous.

Now while I admire your scientific method in trying to determine "the truth" about the "engine author" for many Excalibur products in particular, I do feel that, no matter how hard you pursue this, you will quite possibly never be able to derive entirely satisfactory conclusions for all of them - there are so many fingers in so many pies of so many models in more recent dedicated chess computer history.

Detection of clones however generally is a more straightforward matter.

Regards

Cameron

Cameron,

I clone test a lot and agree with that. Your conclusions however are what?

I think I need a more specific answer from you because your conclusion is something from Spracklen has been added. In your opinion for all the computers or Grandmaster only?

Mirage is the father of these computers therefore my conclusions remain correct. Igor is 100% the same from clone tests as Mirage. Mirage came from Krypton and not Nelson therefore you have a few possibilities to consider:

1) if GM is also 100% the same as Mirage (clone tests) then either the Spracklen theory is wrong or the modifier is a Krypton person. Hence the authorship of the modifications were not made by Ron Nelson.
2) If the modifications only apply to the GM. Modifications by using other peoples chess programs does not equal chess program author. It never has, it never will. Ask Rybka.

Best regards

[Steve B]

Posts continuously reference Igor & GM without reference to the father Mirage.

Mirage is the father of these computers therefore my conclusions remain correct. Igor is 100% the same from clone tests as Mirage. Mirage came from Krypton and not Nelson

I have already said that the notion that Mirage came out of the Blue from Krypton is not reasonable
so you mentioning Mirage as somehow it being clearly not a Nelson engine is faulty and simply ignores my repeated posts on this issue
one final time

I believe.. that White who worked for CXG at the Time Nelson was a heavy investor in CXG leaves to go to Krypton with Nelsons Engine and they release the Mirage with the same Robotic technology as used in the Fidelity Phantoms
probably everything cross -licensed and legal

Nick out of all respect.. its time my friend.. to just move on

Regards
Steve