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KnightCap is a chess program written for the Fujitsu AP1000+ parallel
computer (running AP/Linux).
The principal differences between KnightCap and other chess programs
are:
- KnightCap has an optional fully rendered 3D interface, giving a feel
much more like an "over the board" game.
- KnightCap was developed to run on a parallel distributed memory
machine, although it also runs on normal unix boxes.
- KnightCap does not have an opening book---instead it keeps a file
(brain.dat) of losing moves and inserts them in the hash table at the
start of each search. At present it has about 1500 entries, and
this makes it a pretty competitive opening player.
- KnightCap learns the parameters of its evaluation function as it
plays. The most dramatic example of how this helps is an experiment
we conducted on FICS in which KnightCap learnt from a 1650 player
to a 2100 player in just 300 games.
KnightCap now beats gnuchess consistently and is within "coo-ee" of
crafty, although I think it needs deeper search or some more dramatic
selective search to be truly competitive with the best micro
programs.
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