in memoriam: Theo van der Storm

Hello all,

kpato was so friendly to set up a

user tournament in memory of Theo

van der Storm (1960-2009). It will

start on December 1, 2011, which would

have been Theo's 51's birthday.

Register here

Theo was a good friend of mine for many years.

We had seen each other on several chess occasions:

\* in the 1990's at the AEGON tournaments

between men and computers

\* in Paderborn during the computer chess tournaments

\* In 2005 and 2006, when I was tournament director

of the Chess960 computer world Championships in Mainz,

Theo became my deputy referee.

In March 2005, in Paderborn, I introduced EWN to the

computer chess community, and Theo was the one who grasped

a good strategy for the game much quicker than all the

others. Within hours he became a really strong player.

That is remarkable especially, because in those days

only very few strong players (kitaktus and me, to name

them all; LuiseR came later) were around.

Theo played EWN on the German server Inetplay (where

also Richard M. came across the game). He also wrote

a strong computer bot, named "MeinStein". And of course,

Theo helped to make EWN so popular on LittleGolem.

On Inetplay, Theo had several German friends and fans.

Legendary is his 2005 duel (over 50 games) with "Madam".

Theo won by 29-21.

You can find more information and some photos of Theo

here

and

here.

In that "Long Night of Science 2005" in Jena, Theo was the

guest of honour. By the way, in five of the pictures you

can see also kitaktus, in the blue pullover, with orange

button.

Or directly here in duel with Theo:

click

Ingo.

Just last week I enjoyed reading and following your online game with Theo back in March of 2005:

Here's that link, if others want to follow the game:

http://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php?id=415289

I really liked MeinStein_c! I played over 2 hours in a row against him. Nice and crasy too :-))

Once we both, MeinStein_c and i, have so high points, that we are in the near of the next coulor "green" what means, the high level like 2000 here on this server.

Theo and i said, that we play so long that one get "green". That was a strong night for us... many emotions are in memory of Theo...

Jonny

I tried to get "green" against MeinStein_c too. I also have a lot of memorys of this night. Playing against his programm was almost like playing against Theo. I liked it a lot to have him around on inetplay.

Thanks Luise, you are absolute right. MeinStein_c was just faster then Theo :-)) he was a great thinker.

what exaclty is MeinStein_c ?

How i can play with him?

Thanks.

Hello kpato, Ingo wrote:

Theo played EWN on the German server Inetplay (where

also Richard M. came across the game). He also wrote

a strong computer bot, named "MeinStein". And of course,

Theo helped to make EWN so popular on LittleGolem.

On Inetplay, Theo had several German friends and fans.

Legendary is his 2005 duel (over 50 games) with "Madam".

Theo won by 29-21.

Yes but i tried to find EWN in Inetplay, but i couldnt

Ok, EWN is taken from this server. And MeinStein_c just play, when Theo is there. Not like Rororo. So you never can play against MeinStein_c. Sorry, thats now history.

Why did they take EWN from the inetplay-server? Is there any understandable reason?

Hello,

> Why did they take EWN from the inetplay-server?

> Is there any understandable reason?

I am the inventor of EWN and also the owner of the rights

with the name "EinStein wuerfelt nicht". In Summer 2008 (or

was it 2007 already?!) the ownership of "Inetplay" changed.

With the new owners (a company from Hamburg) I made a contract

for one year to see which direction Inetpley would take. It

turned out that the development was negative from my point of

view: "They" put lots of advertisement

on the server, including links to pages with erotic and pornographic

content. As a reaction, a large part of the inetplay-EWN community left

the server. I gave the owners two warnings: go back to old inetplay-style

or the EWN license will not be prolonged.

They reacted only very reluctantly. So I did not prolong the license.

Ingo.

PS. Luckily I am lightyears more happy with the way, Richard Malaschitz

is running Little Golem. Thank you, Richard.

Wow, that was a very good move from a Son of God.

Hey Ingo, i downloaded MeinStein_c from a website, but i can use it.

Or maybe i don't know how. It is playable, or it is just for analyzing things and that stuff?

Hi kpato, unfortunately I can not help you.

When I understood correctly, the file for download

is source code in C, and you have to compile it.

Ingo.

Now I took some time to translate the report on

the 2005 EWN tournament - with Theo van er Storm -

also to English.

Click here.

Ingo.

Great idea for this memorial! Just joined it.

For those who want to play against his program, you can download it from the CSVN website: http://bit.ly/ny6JGB.

Jan

Thanks for the link,

it works?

It should work, except maybe for an error in the batch file.

And you need a Java Runtime available, as it is a Java program.

Some messages above I had linked to the Ewn tournament

in Jena, in November 2005.

I now found time to take photos of the nice text that

Theo wrote in my guest book when he was in Jena for

that tournament.

Upper part

Lower part, including Theo's chain product formula

which made MeinStein so strong.

Ingo.

What is the background on the chain product formula? At first I thought the 1 through 6 were die roll outcomes, but on a closer look, I think XPi is the probability that player X wins on ply i, given that the game gets that far, and YPi is similarly the probability that player Y wins on ply i. If so, Ptot is the probability of death for player Y (Witz).

Hello Ghost,

> What is the background on the chain product formula?

Theo explained me in 2005. And I still know - at least partially -

the meaning.

> At first I thought the 1 through 6 were die roll outcomes, but

> on a closer look, I think XPi is the probability that player X

> wins on ply i,

Not directly.

The xp(i) come from a "solitair race" where only the stones

of player I are involved. The yp(j) come from an analogous

"solitair race" where only the stones of player II are involved.

xp(i) is the probability that the solitair position for I leads

to a reaco of the goal in exactly i moves.

Some simplifying assumption of independence leads to the

product of probabilities.

Stefan Schwarz had developed a simpler model (for Hanfried) where only the

expected values of the solitair races were taken into account.

To distinguish between the two approaches I had coined the terms

"Schwarz tables" and "van der Storm chains".

Ingo.

Congrats to Gambler the Bot
The winner of the First STORM tournament!