Pythagoras: You have completely missed my point. The elegance of the solution. If we say that table look up and the use of books isn't allowed, then I say SMIRF is the superior program. You are being a results merchant. If every move in a game was known, the table look up method would work to perfection. Yes, yes, you've already proved there's less atoms in the universe than possible moves so there'd be little chance of having a way to store or access such a table. But supposing it was possible to have such a book of every move. Now compare this to a bunch of rules that tell when where to move that has maybe a 100,000 lines of instruction. Which would you say is the better solution? This is what I'm getting at. To me, anybody can use these table look up methods, opening, middle, or end game. To have a program not do this and still play well is to me an amazing thing and it is a program that I'd rather play against. What's the point of playing some machine that just looks up its moves? I might as well go get a book and look up for my moves too. It just becomes a matter of who has the better or larger data base. What's the point except that you'll win every time? When that happens it is no longer a game that is being played.

Programs that use an opening book is indeed a very helpful thing. I think that if all bits used or available to be used are counted, the program that uses the least is the best. Reinhard says 60,000 bytes. Both of you say Vortex has 7,000,000 for its program, another 7,000,000 positions for its opening book, and 10,000,000,000 for its endgame table. By my way of looking at it, SMIRF is the better program if it could play as well as Vortex. So maybe it can't play blitz Chess, but how about Embassy Chess at tournament time controls. What's that you say? Vortex can't play Embassy Chess? Or it's opening book is useless in Embassy Chess? Then SMIRF is by far the better program just by being versatile. I know which of the two I'd rather have. Can Vortex play the CRC as well as SMIRF? This is what I mean, SMIRF is able to play these games equally well without the use of books.

Sure, if the goal of the problem is to devise the best playing program by whatever means at one's disposal, then yes, the program that wins the most is the better program. It was my understanding of SMIRF that Reinhard purposely did not work with that goal in mind, but instead wanted to create a program that played as it does.