| Author |
Message |
M Winther (Kalroten)
New member
Username: Kalroten
Post Number: 4
Registered: 1-2007
| | Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 10:56 am: | |
In the following I discuss tweaking Zillions to play good chess, and evaluate its chess playing strength. Zillions can be tweaked to play chess openings good, and to evaluate the pieces correctly. I nearly always tweak the pieces, and give them new values. That's why I try different alternatives and playtest them, and also evaluate them intuitively. If the piece is too weak I often give it new capabilities, like I have done with the Ladon, the Castalia, etc. I also encourage castling, and discourage early queen moves. All this is very easy to do, and the effect is marvelous.
For instance, I altered the Korean Chess and Chinese Chess code in the Zillions standard versions. All I did, more or less, was to tweak the pieces so that their values became more correct. The result was that my tweaked versions won one match each against the standard Zillions versions. Both matches ended 6-0. So the effect is an immediate increase in playing strength. Please have a look in my zrf's and copy the tweaking code. It's a pity that people don't tweak their programs. Perhaps it's not always necessary, but in most cases it is, and suddenly the program is interesting to play against and the playtests are valuable.
Zillions can play chess very well, if pawn moves are encouraged in the opening, etc. I playtested my Saitek Travel Champion which is evaluated to Elo 2080 by USCF. This is a very proper evaluation, I think. This computer plays a very nice game of chess. I ran it against my Blindfold Chess (which contains some tweaking) at 10s per move in two games, and 30s per move in one game. The Zillions computer was a 1.6 GHz. The two first games ended 2-0 to Zillions and the last was drawn, although Zillions had a pawn up in the endgame. In the first game Zillions had a pawn up in the endgame, too, but it should have been a draw. The Travel Champion made a silly move however.
In the second game the Travel Champion was run over in the opening. Openings were well-known. The first was a Keres defence. The other a Caro-Kann, Panov variation, and the third a closed Sicilian. Zillions played better in the opening in all games, so the tweaking is effective. While the Saitek computer could put up some resistance, I would judge Zillions to be, perhaps, Elo 2150-2200, on an 1.6 GHz computer, because it wasn't that superior. Of course, more playtesting is needed. But a good guess would be at least Elo 2250 on a standard computer of today, that is, around 3.2 GHz.
People seem to underestimate Zillions's chess playing capacity greatly. It's a good program that plays an interesting game, at least when tweaked. Of course, against humans it would fare even better because we aren't used to playing these strange chess variants, with their strangely moving bifurcation pieces, etc. However, in standard chess, strong human chessplayers would know how to overcome it. /Mats |
Sean Duggan (Dream)
New member
Username: Dream
Post Number: 71
Registered: 9-2000
| | Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:07 am: | |
^_^ So, you ask us to incorporate your changes. What are these changes and where can we find them? |
M Winther (Kalroten)
New member
Username: Kalroten
Post Number: 5
Registered: 1-2007
| | Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 2:33 pm: | |
Hello, Sean.
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/chessvar.htm
You have to look in the code, where aQueen is changed to Queen, and a dummy piece is flipped when castling (to encourage castling), etc. Possibly the tweaking can be improved. The most important tweaking is to alter the piece values. In many cases this is absolutely necessary. Zillions cannot evaluate certain pieces, such as cannons, correctly. But even in standard chess Zillions somewhat underestimates the knight. The queen and the rook are also somewhat underestimated. Zillions often thinks that it can exchange a queen for rook + bishop. This very seldom works, and is generally a lost game. It often thinks it can exchange a rook for bishop + pawn. This seldom works, too. /Mats |
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