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Steve B wrote:
continuing with my meaningless and immaterial observations
Speaking about the plastic trays that hold the pieces and batteries ...i notice two empty pockets for what looks like the adapter and the different connections
my guess is that Millennium originally planned to ship the unit with the adapter but wanted to keep the price to under 100 euro so they scrapped the idea
Nothing (well almost nothing) is meaningless or immaterial in Schachcomputer Land my friend.
I too have been contemplating the vacant cavities in the vacuum-formed tray for some considerable time now and I concur with your theory.
I do however have a twist to the theory...
For those with an adaptor, try inserting the adaptor body and each of the three plugs in their cavities.
At least with my fiddling around, they don't appear to fit well at all - almost as if Millennium discovered the tray mouldings weren't correct...
...and therefore had to ditch the "all in one" idea anyway Regards
The Klute offers you the white pieces and the advantage of the first move.
Meaningless Observation from game 1..
the CMG was able to take back all of the moves in the last game and replay them so my guess is that the computer has an unlimited "take back" feature
In the second game both computers were out of book at move 10
on move 13 MCG voluntarily gives up the right to 0-0 by moving its K to d8
WM quickly exploits the situation by sacking its N for 3 P's leaving the BK stranded in the center of the board with no P cover
while material is even you just know the MCG cant last long with an exposed K and the heavy pieces still on the board..it didnt
I wish more Schachcomputer models had resign capabilities - and I don't mean the option in certain Fidelity models to "resign" only when there's a forced mate.
I mean real resignation - as taught to us by our forefathers and to be passed on to future generations.
In my view probably the best true resigner of all time was the SciSys Chess Champion Mark V way back in 1981.
Throwing in the towel just hasn't been quite the same since Regards
The Klute offers you the white pieces and the advantage of the first move.
I wish more Schachcomputer models had resign capabilities - and I don't mean the option in certain Fidelity models to "resign" only when there's a forced mate.
I mean real resignation - as taught to us by our forefathers and to be passed on to future generations.
In my view probably the best true resigner of all time was the SciSys Chess Champion Mark V way back in 1981.
Throwing in the towel just hasn't been quite the same since Regards
The Stronger Novag's were always quite the gentlemen in that they knew how to properly Resign with an announcement in the display
as a rule of thumb..if a computer cannot bring itself to admit defeat and resign ....then when its Eval hits -9.99 i call it a day and remove the computer from my desk as its...
Steve B wrote:
The Stronger Novag's were always quite the gentlemen in that they knew how to properly Resign with an announcement in the display
as a rule of thumb..if a computer cannot bring itself to admit defeat and resign ....then when its Eval hits -9.99 i call it a day and remove the computer from my desk as its...
That's true with stronger Novags and also certain stronger Mephistos.
Other excellent resigners are machines with the Kaare Danielsen 16K program.
In my book the SciSys Mark V is still the all-time king of resigners though.
I and Monsieur Plastique have strong views on the sanctity of non-human-intervention in games between machines that don't resign however. We must not play God - our task is to operate and not to adjudicate!
...play it through to the bitter end Regards
The Klute offers you the white pieces and the advantage of the first move.
klute wrote:I and Monsieur Plastique have strong views on the sanctity of non-human-intervention in games between machines that don't resign however. We must not play God - our task is to operate and not to adjudicate!
...play it through to the bitter end Regards
Quite true, though in my game against it today, I was wondering exactly how low the evaluation was going to get. It was at something like -21.9 or thereabouts well before it was mated. I was actually thinking how low can the number possibly get?
I like the Ed Schroder approach to resignation the best. I seem to recall it was -9.99 for three consecutive moves then resignation was invoked. It does not strike me as very hard to program this into a machine that has sufficient ROM available.
Chess is like painting the Mona Lisa whilst walking through a minefield.
Game 3..
Again the MCG is out of book at move 10
i am guessing that the MCG's opening book is limited to 10 moves deep in any variation..the WM left book at move 14
once again the MCG loses the right to 0-0 this time resulting in the loss of a P
Major exchanges of pieces and pawns then ensue leaving what looks like a drawn R+P ending
inexplicably the MCG... while still a P down .. exchanges R's at move 36 tossing away a possible draw for a lost endgame
the rest was a matter of technique for the WM
Steve B wrote:
continuing with my meaningless and immaterial observations
Speaking about the plastic trays that hold the pieces and batteries ...i notice two empty pockets for what looks like the adapter and the different connections
my guess is that Millennium originally planned to ship the unit with the adapter but wanted to keep the price to under 100 euro so they scrapped the idea
Nothing (well almost nothing) is meaningless or immaterial in Schachcomputer Land my friend.
here are a couple of features i am pleasantly surprised with..
1)you can change many of the options while the computer is on the move
2)i was trying to set up a position and i didnt know how to change the color of the pieces
i pressed the "help" button" and with a few presses it guided me through the whole process
cant recall any other computer i have that has this built in feature
My Meaningless Observations Continue...Regards
Steve
We Start the best of 5 match against the Novag Star Diamond
Selective Search rates the SD 2173
MCG was out of book at move 9..SD at move 14
a rather mundane affair with no side gaining any positional or material advantage
several times each computer avoided the 3 fold rep draw shuffling pieces back and forth aimlessly
finally both computers simply got bored and agree to repeat the positon 3 times
Monsieur Plastique wrote:Well I am really chuffed. I was feeling relatively good and reasonably alert today, so I decided to challenge the Millennium Genius to another hardcore 40 moves in 2 hour game (playing level was set to Tournament 6). The machine was set to play at full strength with pondering on (ECO off). I played within my clock allowance and of course there were no take backs allowed. So this was a serious tournament game under tournament conditions.
Masterfully played, Jon!
I’ve been on the white side of the Bird’s variant of the Spanish game on more than one occasion. This was an especially excellent choice against a machine, as they excel in the open variation which leads to an early and enduring myriad of tactical complications. Another interesting choice might be the Breyer or Retreat variation (9… Nb8). Black expends time in the opening (usually not a good idea), but in actual practice white often has a tough time obtaining a tangible advantage.
Steve B wrote:We Start the best of 5 match against the Novag Star Diamond
Selective Search rates the SD 2173
MCG was out of book at move 9..SD at move 14
a rather mundane affair with no side gaining any positional or material advantage
several times each computer avoided the 3 fold rep draw shuffling pieces back and forth aimlessly
finally both computers simply got bored and agree to repeat the positon 3 times
Thanks for taking my advice and initiating this SD/McG bout.
This should be a much closer and more interesting match, as the late model WunderMachine just has too much number crunching power.
Cyberchess wrote:
Thanks for taking my advice and initiating this SD/McG bout.
This should be a much closer and more interesting match, as the late model WunderMachine just has too much number crunching power.
Yeah the WM match felt like leading a lamb to the slaughter
too sadistic for my tastes...
Steve B wrote:here are a couple of features i am pleasantly surprised with..
Another feature I like: At the end of a game you can run back through the entire game using the left arrow key then replay it move by move with the right arrow key (without the need to execute the moves on the board). I'm not sure if there is a hard limit but it had no problems at all with my 126 ply game yesterday, so I am assuming it is for practical purposes limitless. This makes recording the game very convenient, as you don't necessarily have to bother doing it on the fly if you don't want. I expect this was probably always a feature of the top-of-the-line Lang Mephistos back in the old days, however back then, since they did not have an LCD board display you would have needed to re-execute the actual moves on the board to re-create the game. In terms of my own experience, the only other machine I own that can do this (without the need to physically replay the game with pieces) is my Saitek Maestro.
Yes, self-resignation would have been nice but then again as Klute and I have often said, a computer that refuses to surrender his sword makes for good mating and late endgame practice. It's all very nice getting winning positions but every so often you will face a stubborn and disrespectful opponent who refuses to lay down their sword. For these scenarios, non-resigning machines are an asset.
Who can ever forget this highly embarrassing Anna Ushenina game from a couple of years back?
Cyberchess wrote:This should be a much closer and more interesting match, as the late model WunderMachine just has too much number crunching power.
When you think about it though, there are good reasons this was always going to be a massacre. Firstly, the WunderMachine pre-dates the Genius program that defeated Garry Kasparov by only 12 months (1993 and 1994). The WunderMachine was running on a 486 at 66 Mhz I believe and the version of Genius that defeated Kasparov was running the earliest Pentium at 166 Mhz - the first generation upgrade from the fastest 486 processor. As most of us were well and truly working people back then we will probably all remember our office upgrades from a 486 machine to the Pentium. Yes, it was a noticeable improvement but it wasn't massive - more improvement actually came from the fact that newer machines were running more memory than the 486 models. It took a few years of Pentium development before the difference became a chalk and cheese one.
So realistically, there was far, far less playing strength difference between the WunderMachine and the machine that defeated Kasparov versus the former and the Millennium running on a mere 48 Mhz ARM processor (which realistically speaking in 2015 would be happily deployed in the most mundane of micro-controller applications).
Furthermore, you are always going to get an exaggerated result between two ostensibly similar programs when you pit them against each other and one has a significant hardware advantage. You only need to look at the results of matches where a machine plays against a significantly overclocked version of itself to see the performance rating difference is higher than their actual proper ratings would suggest.
Chess is like painting the Mona Lisa whilst walking through a minefield.
Game two between the brash young upstart and the strongest chess computer Novag ever released for sale...
MCG was out of book at move 4!
SD out at move 8
both sides play evenly until move 33 when the SD begins to go astray
allowing the MCG to penetrate deep into its QSide
at move 40 the SD chooses the wrong square for its K to escape check and the white forces begin building a mating net which can only be avoided by the loss of heavy material