Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Dec 11, 2017 12:56 AM UTC:
It's certainly possible I'm too pessimistic. Playing Crazyhouse is pretty impressive as Stockfish has no concept of drops, and that's a huge change. That said, it's still an 8x8 game. Stockfish has bitboards deeply embedded throughout. That said, it is very object-oriented and template-driven, so replacing the bitboard class with one that uses more bits might not be too bad. But I still think it actually would be harder to make it play Omega Chess than Crazyhouse. Anyway, Stockfish's selectivity is incredible. It makes sense to me to just design an engine with universality in mind and then copy the fantastic elements of Stockfish's search algorithm.
Regarding AlphaChess, apparently this is a completely different beast. I should have read the article before commenting :) I might have some thoughts after I read it.
It's certainly possible I'm too pessimistic. Playing Crazyhouse is pretty impressive as Stockfish has no concept of drops, and that's a huge change. That said, it's still an 8x8 game. Stockfish has bitboards deeply embedded throughout. That said, it is very object-oriented and template-driven, so replacing the bitboard class with one that uses more bits might not be too bad. But I still think it actually would be harder to make it play Omega Chess than Crazyhouse. Anyway, Stockfish's selectivity is incredible. It makes sense to me to just design an engine with universality in mind and then copy the fantastic elements of Stockfish's search algorithm.
Regarding AlphaChess, apparently this is a completely different beast. I should have read the article before commenting :) I might have some thoughts after I read it.