Ron Nelson Redux

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spacious_mind
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Post by spacious_mind »

Steve B wrote:
spacious_mind wrote:
As a VP he probably can't tell you the truth if he wanted to anyway.

It's is easy, Bryan can ask him to be specific and recall the ones he knows where Ron Nelson wrote chess engine, surely as a VP he can would know exactly which ones. Or does he mean tinkering with features and stuff. Obviously he must have done that as well.

Best regards
do you seriously think the V.P. will rattle off every single computer Nelson programmed?
failing that you seriously will not believe Nelson was the engine author if Bryan confirms my interpretation posted above?


to be honest i expected the "guy dosent know what he is talking about" argument to be made sooner or later
just like the "Nelson must have exaggerated his role" argument when he personally told me he programmed the GM/Mirage

the V.P. seemed to know quite clearly Nelson's Role with Fidelity
no ambiguity there.fairly detailed information .

i have been answering questions about dedicated chess computers on the internet since 1997 ..on several different forums ..thousands of questions over the years ..
and i always make sure to be very careful when i post an answer to a question
if Bryan can confirm my interpretation then the issue is closed for me and i will have no problem at all answering anyone who asks that it was Ron Nelson who programmed the GM/Mirage

if my interpretation was wrong then i agree the issue remains open

Regards
Steve
Of course I would, I would expect him to rattle off at least one or two with "I saw Ron Nelson and his team around a table writing the chess program for X, Y or Z" or "designing X, Y or Z", wouldn't you?

I expect a lot of factual details from Al Lawrence:

"Lawrence later became Vice President of Excalibur Electronics in Miami. Excalibur also maintained the World Chess Hall of Fame, for which Lawrence served as volunteer Executive Director. In 2009, he helped move the Hall's artifacts to its current location in St. Louis. In 2012"

When did Al Lawrence start working for Excalibur and when did it end for him?

Sorry Steve, the I can't remember argument is a cop out especially from someone who is involved working for a hobby that they love. Bryan needs to take advantage of the connection and bleed him dry :)

PS. It also sound like from his title at Excalibur "Business Development" that he was in Public Relations a PR man for them.

Best regards
Nick
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Monsieur Plastique
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Post by Monsieur Plastique »

spacious_mind wrote:It's is easy, Bryan can ask him to be specific and recall the ones he knows where Ron Nelson wrote chess engine, surely as a VP he can would know exactly which ones.
I'm not sure I could take his word for it (Excalibur VP, not Bryan) in any case. It's not generally been my experience that Executives in any company are intimately acquainted with the nitty gritty nuts and bolts of the work employees do for them. Unless the company is miniscule. Still, someone who worked for Excalibur must have dealt with all the legal / licensing stuff and you'd likely find your answer there. I continue to have the opinion that although Nelson likely did everything (systems, hardware, engine) for almost all non-clone Excaliburs, this was not the case for the GM (where I believe he did do the systems / hardware side though).
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Post by Fernando »

Monsieur Plastique wrote:
spacious_mind wrote:It's is easy, Bryan can ask him to be specific and recall the ones he knows where Ron Nelson wrote chess engine, surely as a VP he can would know exactly which ones.
I'm not sure I could take his word for it (Excalibur VP, not Bryan) in any case. It's not generally been my experience that Executives in any company are intimately acquainted with the nitty gritty nuts and bolts of the work employees do for them. Unless the company is miniscule. Still, someone who worked for Excalibur must have dealt with all the legal / licensing stuff and you'd likely find your answer there. I continue to have the opinion that although Nelson likely did everything (systems, hardware, engine) for almost all non-clone Excaliburs, this was not the case for the GM (where I believe he did do the systems / hardware side though).

Do you perceive some clear programming difference between GM and the others?
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Post by mclane »

IMO grandmaster and igor are brothers.
Igor in press sensory, gm in magnetic sensors.
They both have permanent brain. While many other engines clones have no permanent brain. Why did they use program having NO permanent brain at all ?! Isn't this alone unique ?? Do you know any other programmers engine using NO permanent brain. Only Ron nelsons old programs come to my mind. And that it maybe the reason, Nelson maybe never felt permanent brain so important.
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Post by Fernando »

mclane wrote:IMO grandmaster and igor are brothers.
Igor in press sensory, gm in magnetic sensors.
They both have permanent brain. While many other engines clones have no permanent brain. Why did they use program having NO permanent brain at all ?! Isn't this alone unique ?? Do you know any other programmers engine using NO permanent brain. Only Ron nelsons old programs come to my mind. And that it maybe the reason, Nelson maybe never felt permanent brain so important.
I am not clear that the presence or absence of that feature is enough to assign brotherhood.
Almost every old comp. had not permanent brain. And there were many different.
All everyone has, but they can be very different.

I suppose the kind of game they play is the only key to know that regards
Fern
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Post by mclane »

Fidelity Ron Nelson no permanent Brain
Fidelity spracklen permanent Brain.

Thats true that the first generation had no permanent brain.
Many of the first generation computers had no pb.
Intelligent chess. Boris.
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Monsieur Plastique
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Post by Monsieur Plastique »

Fernando wrote:Do you perceive some clear programming difference between GM and the others?
Yes. It is quite simply a whole lot stronger than any other program allegedly attributed to Nelson even after adjusting for the hardware. Best Nelson ever got on the H8 based programs was a low 1600s rating and even that is being generous - most of them would lose badly to a stock standard Constellation and the version of it in my Deluxe Talking Touch Chess (10 MHz H8) lost badly to the humble Mephisto Europa 8.5 to 1.5! Yes, there is a apparently a version of Igor running (not all Igors are equal)around a bit stronger but mainly because it could ponder and still definitely no stronger than a Europa / Marco Polo. Yet the GM is a genuine high 1700s to low 1800s machine. It just doesn't make sense that Nelson wrote the engine. Why would an engine allegedly written by Nelson suddenly gain almost 200 ELO points over everything he ever wrote before and afterwards during his career lasting nearly four decades? It just isn't possible unless he was deliberately and routinely committing professional suicide by deliberately holding back his talent during the creation of every single device he ever authored only to pull out the stops for one machine only? Or was the far more logical explanation that he used a third party engine for that particular model and designed the machine and operating system to use it?

And the other obvious differentiation is in playing style. All the Nelson programs will hit a point in most games where they simply make a completely aimless and pointless move. King shuffling being the best example. You don't see the GM program doing that sort of thing. Oh and the opening books. There's the Nelson opening book. Then there is everyone else's...

I have to be blunt here. Even if Nelson himself said he wrote the GM engine I'd refuse to believe it! And remember, sometimes the people originally involved themselves in all of this have trouble remembering things accurately and in sufficient detail.
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Post by Fernando »

Monsieur Plastique wrote:
Fernando wrote:Do you perceive some clear programming difference between GM and the others?
Yes. It is quite simply a whole lot stronger than any other program allegedly attributed to Nelson even after adjusting for the hardware. Best Nelson ever got on the H8 based programs was a low 1600s rating and even that is being generous - most of them would lose badly to a stock standard Constellation and the version of it in my Deluxe Talking Touch Chess (10 MHz H8) lost badly to the humble Mephisto Europa 8.5 to 1.5! Yes, there is a apparently a version of Igor running (not all Igors are equal)around a bit stronger but mainly because it could ponder and still definitely no stronger than a Europa / Marco Polo. Yet the GM is a genuine high 1700s to low 1800s machine. It just doesn't make sense that Nelson wrote the engine. Why would an engine allegedly written by Nelson suddenly gain almost 200 ELO points over everything he ever wrote before and afterwards during his career lasting nearly four decades? It just isn't possible unless he was deliberately and routinely committing professional suicide by deliberately holding back his talent during the creation of every single device he ever authored only to pull out the stops for one machine only? Or was the far more logical explanation that he used a third party engine for that particular model and designed the machine and operating system to use it?

And the other obvious differentiation is in playing style. All the Nelson programs will hit a point in most games where they simply make a completely aimless and pointless move. King shuffling being the best example. You don't see the GM program doing that sort of thing. Oh and the opening books. There's the Nelson opening book. Then there is everyone else's...

I have to be blunt here. Even if Nelson himself said he wrote the GM engine I'd refuse to believe it! And remember, sometimes the people originally involved themselves in all of this have trouble remembering things accurately and in sufficient detail.

I Have a GM but never gave to it much attention just because is cumbersome, meaning i cannot play it in my desk as I write due to its seize. But after what you have said I will give it a try.

Fern
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Post by mclane »

If you say it is not Nelson then you must tell us who the programmer is.
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Post by mclane »

I have now igor and grandmaster and they play identical.
In 5 positions I tried they came with the same move in nearly the same amount of time and evaluation was identical.

While igor shows search depth when hint gets pressed grandmaster only shows move via hint, and for score you need to press score button.
But IMO there is no way to see search depth after computation ?!

So for testing purposes igor is maybe the better choice because you see search depth.
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Post by mclane »

Btw,

The igor runs on 24, the grandmaster on 32 MHz !!
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Post by Monsieur Plastique »

mclane wrote:I have now igor and grandmaster and they play identical.
Unless my memory is failing I believe there are two Igors running around. One version that has an identical engine to the GM. And another altogether weaker machine with a completely different level structure. Member Klute may be able to clarify this as I seem to recall he bought one of the latter expecting it to be one of the former.
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Post by mclane »

Yes there Are 2 Versions.

Here how the gm / igor plays:

[Event "40/120"]
[Site "Scw"]
[Date "19.07.2015"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Mephisto mm5"]
[Black "Excalibur GM 32 mhz"]
[Result "0-1"]

1. c4 Nf6 2. d4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. cxd5 Nxd5 5. e4 Nxc3 6. bxc3 Bg7 7. Bc4 O-O 8.
Nf3 c5 9. Rb1 Nc6 10. Be3 Bg4 11. Be2 Bxf3 12. Bxf3 cxd4 13. cxd4 Bxd4 14. Bxd4
Nxd4 15. O-O b5 16. Bg4 Qd6 17. f4 e5 18. g3 Rad8 19. Qc1 h5 20. Bd1 Rc8 21.
Qe3 exf4 22. Rxf4 Qc5 23. Rf2 Qe5 24. Rb4 Rfd8 25. Rb1 a5 26. Bb3 Nxb3 27. Qxb3
Rc4 28. a4 Qxe4 29. axb5 Rd3 30. Qa2 Ra3 31. Qxa3 Qxb1+ 32. Kg2 Qxb5 33. Qf3
Rc7 34. Rd2 a4 35. Qa8+ Kh7 36. Rf2 Rb7 37. Qf8 Qd5+ 38. Kh3 Qe6+ 39. Kg2 Qc6+
40. Kh3 Qd7+ 41. Kg2 h4 42. Qc5 Qe6 43. Qd4 hxg3 44. hxg3 a3 45. Qh4+ Kg7 46.
Qd8 Rd7 47. Qc8 Kh7 48. Qf8 Qd5+ 49. Kh2 Ra7 50. Qb8 Re7 51. Qb1 Re3 52. Qf1
Kg8 53. Qg2 Qh5+ 54. Kg1 Kg7 55. Rf4 Qe5 56. Qf2 Re1+ 57. Kg2 Re2 58. Rxf7+ Kh6
59. Qxe2
0-1
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Post by mclane »

[Event "40/120"]
[Site "Scw"]
[Date "24.07.2015"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Novag Turqoise"]
[Black "Excalibur Grandmaster 32mhz"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e3 e6 5. Nf3 Nbd7 6. Bd3 dxc4 7. Bxc4 b5 8. Bd3
a6 9. e4 c5 10. e5 cxd4 11. Nxb5 Nxe5 12. Nxe5 axb5 13. Qf3 Bb4+ 14. Ke2 Ra6
15. Bg5 Bd7 16. Qf4 Bd6 17. Qxd4 Bxe5 18. Qxe5 O-O 19. Rhc1 Bc6 20. Bh4 Bd5 21.
Bxb5 Ra7 22. Bc4 Nd7 23. Bxd8 Nxe5 24. Bxd5 Rxd8 25. Be4 f5 26. Bc2 Kf7 27. Rd1
Rc8 28. Bb3 Rac7 29. Rd2 Kf6 30. Rad1 g5 31. Rd8 Rxd8 32. Rxd8 h5 33. Rd6 Nc4
34. Bxc4 Rxc4 35. Ke3 Re4+ 36. Kd2 Rg4 37. g3 Ra4 38. a3 h4 39. Kd3 hxg3 40.
hxg3 Ke5 41. Rd7 Ra8 42. Ke3 Rc8 43. b4 Rc3+ 44. Rd3 Rc2 45. f4+ gxf4+ 46.
gxf4+ Kf6 47. a4 Rb2 48. b5 Rb1 49. Rd4 Rb3+ 50. Kd2 Rb2+ 51. Kc1 Rb3 52. Kc2
Rf3 53. b6 Rf2+ 54. Kc1 Rf1+ 55. Kc2 Rf2+ 56. Kc1 Rf1+ 57. Kb2 Rf2+ 58. Ka3
Rf3+ 59. Kb4 Rf2 60. a5 Rb2+ 61. Kc5
1-0
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Here we have a fairy tale of the day after tomorrow....
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