I've just checked on Vicki playing online at FICS. The engine is doing pretty well...actually too well. Vicki has a rating of over 2000 for standard and lightning play and 1897 for blitz (see my website for more exact figures - or better yet - log onto FICS and pay Vicki a visit. She plays under the "myvicki" handle).
I've shifted my approach when working on the code. Instead of hacking away and trying to squeeze a few ELO points in between work, family and social life (actually work and family only - sadly this blog is pretty much the limits of my social life :-(), I want to set definite milestones for the engine. The first important change is test cases. I've devoted an entire c-source file for test cases, which I'll run periodically to ensure that I did not break something while adding some nifty new feature. My "hacking"-approach is what cost me to play without a transposition table in last weekend's tournament. This needs to end...
3 comments:
keep up the good work. I always knew Vicki was stronger than you believed. And with those stats she's got another couple of hundred elo to improve yet.
Hi anonymous
Thank you for the faith you have in my little engine. I'm having so much fun with it - even if I can only spend a few minutes per day on chess programming. Posts like yours make it all worth it! Thank you!
Thanks for writing this.
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