Talk:Advanced Chess

I know little about chess and I don't doubt that Gary Kasparov came up with his idea for Advanced Chess independently, but just fyi he's not the first person with the idea. Sci-fi author Vernor Vinge had a main character in his 1984 book "The Peace War" who plays in such tournaments, and in his infamous 1997 paper on "the singularity" as he calls it, he suggests people start particpating in these types of tournaments. I'm a Wikipedia newb so I'm not sure what changes to this topic this information would warrant, if any. I just think Vernor Vinge deserves some sort of honorable mention for this concept. :) -- Nick Bousman (singe@ix.netcom.com) 17:02, 24 Mar 2005 (PST)

Plan

I noticed that the article links to a Plan article that does not mention chess, but instead the concept of a Plan form more generic sense. While there are obviously many ideas in the article that would also appear in one about the conept of a "plan" in chess, it might be confusing for someon who follows the link form a sentance that (rightly) implies that the term is used for some chess specific meanning. So, I would be intrested in suggestions if people think we should:

• Add a section to the artile on Plan mentioning the more specif usage in Chess.
• Create a Plan (chess) page and disambiguate the two pages.
• Do nothing?

I could give either of the first two a decent start but being only about a 1400-1500 player myself it woudl probly be best have have some help with the details. In anyevent I though I would see if anyone wanted to discuss it before I changed anything. Dalf | Talk 00:25, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hash tables?

Coming from a computing background, I find this statement perplexing:

having built-in hash tables for endgames,

What sort of "hash table" allows a computer to play a good endgame? Are you saying that it actually maintains a large database of endgames that's indexed using hashing? I was under the impression that in the endgame the computer relies primarily on search algorithms such as alpha-beta search on game trees. Deco 07:51, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• My understanding is that for end games with less than 4 or 5 pieces (depending on the pieces) databases with every possible move do exist and are used by some of the larger chess engins. A least some of that data could be stored in hash tables, possibly indexed by position. I know a few people who have written chess programs (usually Suicide Chess ) and they do always seem to use some sort of hashing for opening books and endgame databases. Dalf | Talk 09:30, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Just poked around and found Endgame databases Dalf | Talk 09:41, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)