Gandalf
Authors
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Steen Suurballe | engine programmer |
| Dan Wulff | book author |
Participations
| Version | Tournament | Participants | Score | Games |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chess, 2001, Maastricht | 18 | 5.0 | 9 | |
| Chess, 1997, Paris | 34 | 6.0 | 11 | |
| Chess (Blitz), 1997, Paris | 22 | 5.0 | ||
| Gandalf X | Chess, 1996, Jakarta | 27 | 6.0 | 11 |
| Chess, 1995, Paderborn | 34 | 6.5 | 11 | |
| Chess, 1995, Shatin | 24 | 1.5 | 5 | |
| Chess, 1993, Munich | 28 | 3.5 | 9 |
Descriptions
- Description given in 1997:
Gandalf was born an extreme selective program (1 ply brute force + selective search)doing 1500 Nodes / sec on a P90. On SSDF you see a rating of approx 2050. To compete, Gandalf got a standard null-move search engine in early 1996 and has done well at both Jakarta (6 / 9) and Aegon97 ( TPR 2391 ). It has a high amount of chess knowledge, many extensions and is only doing 30K nodes/sec on a PP200. Gandalf searches approx to depth 9-10 in the middlegame on a PP200.
- Description given in 1995:
Gandalf is a PC program developed over the last ten years. The program performs highly selective searches, combining a one-ply brute-force search with selective search and search extensions. The search does not use standard techniques like the null-move method, but instead uses a rule-based method involving a calculation for every node to decide which moves are good. Development of the program was an extremely difficult and time consuming task. Gandalf searches about 1500 nodes per second on a 486/66. Gandalf has considerable chess knowledge and plays aggressively, which is unusual for a highly selective search program. Gandalf uses an opening book containing about 500,000 positions.