In conjunction with the official name change from Delft Institute of Technology to Delft University of Technology in 1986 [5], Pion was superseded by its successor Dutch (Delft University of Technology Chess Program).
The ACM tournament had a special significance, because for the first time a Dutch program participated. Despite only scoring one point, in company with the PION Team was a particular instructive, enjoyable and highly entertaining event!
The PION team, Jan Derksen, Jaap van den Herik and Harry Nefkens sent a tape with source code to Ken Thompson, who arranged that PION could run on a VAX 11/780 of the Purdue University. The team wisely decided to be on the ground a few days before, to solve some possible portability problems - in Delft the program ran on a PDP-11. After some changes, I played a few test games, and in remembrance to its name, PION played only with the pawns. Pieces seemed glued at the bottom rank. Jan tinkered with the program, while Harry concurrently worked on the opening book. A well-meant advice - get never close to a nervous programmer. Harry under voltage is highly explosive! Insults went back and forth, but finally everything worked well under the inspiring leadership of Jaap van den Herik.
On the day of the tournament panic occurred. The terminals from Texas Instruments had no uppercase, while the password of PION to access the VAX 11/780 required one. After a phone call to Bell Labs, Joe Condon changed the password, and a few minutes before the start of the first round, team and program were ready.
a chess program developed by a group of students from Delft Institute of Technology. Jan Derksen, Harry Nefkens and Jaap van den Herik started the development in 1979, Sito Dekker, Roger Hünen, Gerlach van Beinum and John Huisman joined the team later [1] [2] [3]. Written in the C programming language, Pion had an opening book of 4000 positions in 1983, when it searched about 1K nodes per second [4].
In conjunction with the official name change from Delft Institute of Technology to Delft University of Technology in 1986 [5], Pion was superseded by its successor Dutch (Delft University of Technology Chess Program).
Table of Contents
Photos
back of head of Sito Dekker sitting in front of the board [7]
Tournaments
Pion played the first four Dutch Open Computer Chess Championships. The first DOCCC 1981 was the debut, third with 6/9, the DOCCC 1982 fifth with 6/9, the DOCCC 1983 third with 5½/8, and the DOCCC 1984 third again with 4/6. The ACM 1982 in Dallas, Texas was a bit harder, 1 out of 4 running on a VAX 11/780 of Purdue University, the WCCC 1983 in New York on a VAX 11/750 of Bell Laboratories supported by Ken Thompson, and respectable 2 out of 5. Further, Pion played the International Computer Chess Tournament 1984 in Baarn with 2½/5, running on an TNO Geminix [8] with 68000 processor [9].ACM 1982 Experience
translation of excerpt from Tom Fürstenberg's Dutch report on ACM 1982 and WCCC 1983 [10]:The PION team, Jan Derksen, Jaap van den Herik and Harry Nefkens sent a tape with source code to Ken Thompson, who arranged that PION could run on a VAX 11/780 of the Purdue University. The team wisely decided to be on the ground a few days before, to solve some possible portability problems - in Delft the program ran on a PDP-11. After some changes, I played a few test games, and in remembrance to its name, PION played only with the pawns. Pieces seemed glued at the bottom rank. Jan tinkered with the program, while Harry concurrently worked on the opening book. A well-meant advice - get never close to a nervous programmer. Harry under voltage is highly explosive! Insults went back and forth, but finally everything worked well under the inspiring leadership of Jaap van den Herik.
On the day of the tournament panic occurred. The terminals from Texas Instruments had no uppercase, while the password of PION to access the VAX 11/780 required one. After a phone call to Bell Labs, Joe Condon changed the password, and a few minutes before the start of the first round, team and program were ready.
Selected Games
ACM 1982
ACM 1982, round 4, Pion - Savant X [11]WCCC 1983
WCCC 1983, round 2, Ostrich - Pion [12]:See also
Publications
External Links
References
What links here?
Up one level