3 ms·
I vaguely recall reading about a computer chess tournament in the 70s where one program did not have an opening book and was optimized for making moves quickly.
by raganwald 16y ago
I vaguely recall reading about a computer chess tournament in the 70s where one program did not have an opening book and was optimized for making moves quickly. Its opponents would use their opening books to make lightening-fast moves early and then take much longer per move later in the game.
This program was beating much "better" programs because it would open in non-standard ways and while the other programs didn't play the non-standard openings particularly poorly, they weren't tuned to manage their time wisely and would use tons of time early in the game, then run into time trouble later.
- jacquesm 16y agoI don't think that would work today any more, the amount of hardware that is thrown at this problem because of the publicity involved is immense, so a smaller contender would be outperformed even if they came up with a wild and unanticipated strategy.
- raganwald 16y agoI think it came as a surprise to everyone back then. Given limited storage, the opening dictionaries were probably restricted to the most likely opening sequences, especially when playing against other programs with opening dictionaries. Today you could probably just expand the dictionaries to include many of the unlikely opening sequences and couple that with a fine-tuning the investment in each move taking the clock into account.