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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Don Dailey
        
(Message started by: The_Jeh on Nov 1^st, 2013, 11:06am)

Title: Don Dailey
Post by The_Jeh on Nov 1^st, 2013, 11:06am

I read on http://komodochess.com/ that Don Dailey is losing a battle with leukemia. As many of you know, Don is not only the author of the chess engine Komodo, but also is responsible for many of the first Arimaa bots to be used on this site, along with bot_Occam.

Don is a beloved member of the Arimaa community and an essential figure in its history, and so I thought this news may be of interest to us. Perhaps we can express support in some way.

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 1^st, 2013, 2:40pm

Thanks for the news, John, even though it is sad. He says in the thread, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my works; I want to achieve it by not dying!" But there is less chance of the latter than the former. In addition to Komodo chess and his other game engines, it looks like his bots will be part of basic training for all Arimaa newcomers for years to come.

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by Arimabuff on Nov 2^nd, 2013, 11:31am

Very sad news indeed.

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by 99of9 on Nov 14^th, 2013, 11:33pm

Sad to hear. Gnobot is based on his sample bot.

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by Hippo on Nov 15^th, 2013, 5:15am

Sad of course..., will somebody from arimaa comunity write a kind words to the forum mentioning the arimaabots ...?

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by dht on Nov 16^th, 2013, 9:12am

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=281964

Arimalon put up a good fight here despite the average time of the moves it made taking a tenth of the time of Raider

I'd like to see how Raider does against Arimadon

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by Hippo on Nov 17^th, 2013, 3:07am

on 11/16/13 at 09:12:31, dht wrote:

Are you sure you have replied in correct thread?

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by dht on Nov 18^th, 2013, 5:59am

on 11/17/13 at 03:07:01, Hippo wrote:

Are you sure you have replied in correct thread?

Very, arimalon's performance there against a modern bot speaks well to Don Dailey's skill

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by Janzert on Nov 21^st, 2013, 11:26am

Sadly this battle is rapidly drawing to a close. Larry Kaufman, Don's partner on Komodo, has posted an update on talkchess.
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=50114

Janzert

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by The_Jeh on Nov 22^nd, 2013, 11:44pm

And the end has come:

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&p=543128&t=50114

A sad day indeed.

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 1^st, 2013, 11:33am

Too bad Don didn't get to see Komodo win the TCEC (ahead of rivals Houdini, Stockfish, and all the programs like Junior that once were best) by taking the finals over Stockfish 10 wins to 8 with 30 draws. http://tcec.chessdom.com/superfinal.php

Title: Re: Don Dailey
Post by omar on Dec 28^th, 2013, 6:01pm

This morning I went to the komodochess.com site to see how Don Dailey's chess engine was coming along. It was great to see that it placed first in the TCEC rating list http://www.tcec-chess.net/engine_ratings.php but then I was stunned to see the message that Don had passed away. I was going to post about it in the forum, but saw that The_Jeh has already kept us updated.

I'm very saddened by the news. Don had become a good friend. Although I never met him in person, we communicated quite a bit back in 2002 shortly after Arimaa was announced and stayed in touch since then. Don wrote the very first Arimaa playing program (bot_Occam). Amazingly he had the bot up and running in less than two weeks. After that he tried to tweak it to make it better and would ask me lots of questions on material and positional evaluation. But at the time I was still basically a novice at Arimaa and couldn't help much. I think this was the main reason why Don didn't continue to improve Occam; since there wasn't much knowledge about the game available. When Jean's book was released and I showed it to him, he said he was going to come back and work on Occam now that more Arimaa knowledge was available, but said he wanted to first concur chess by building the best chess engine. I'm glad to see that Don fulfilled his life long dream.

http://komodochess.com/DonDailey.htm

I will surely miss him.