Author: Jeroen van Dorp
Date: 05:25:46 04/25/00
Go up one level in this thread
As I don’t know if we’re talking the same, I dug it up and here it is: This is an excerpt from “Computerschaak” (CSVN) , 1/2000 (February), “Topprogramma’s bestrijden elkaar in vijf toernooien” (Top programs battle each other in five tournaments”) by De Gorter. *The article reviews Crafty, Rebel C, Nimzo 7.32, Hiarcs 7.32, Fritz 6, Junior 5, Shredder 4 and Chess Tiger 12.* I know about copywright, but I think De Gorter’s critic has become distorted because of the indeed very bad text at KasparovChess. Feel about the review as you like, but in “Computerschaak” it’s not the same conclusion. It’s a critical but fair review of *all* the above mentioned top programs. De Gorter mainly looks at playing style and the input the programmers / opening book creators / GUI developers have made. His original statement is that all companies tell us their product is super strong, so he wants to test those claims. A few cites now are drifting around, somewhat in the direction of “De Gorter says Crafty is worthless.” That is definitely not true. Basically I also think Crafty doesn’t belong in this article as a freeware engine, but the reason he discusses it is because it is such a well known engine under the ChessBase GUI It’s Crafty 16.6 and I have no information if he used tablebases, but from a few remarks (else) in the article I suppose not, and certainly no 5-man. This is a translation (under my sole responsibility) of the paragraph (original in Dutch) about Crafty, BTW the very first program to be reviewed in the article. Between brackets two remarks for clarification by me, they don’t belong to the article itself. “Crafty On the Internet Chess Club al kinds of versions of this programs play , almost always on superiour hardware. In this case I think of two or four 500MHz processors and a large amount of RAM. The results are in accordance with expectations: SingaCrafty, CraftyCrafty and Crafty are a couple of names of players who have a rating of over 3000, gathered in blitz games. Crafty is a free engine with ChessBase if you purchase Fritz. That is the reason I was curious how it performed against other programs if playing on the same hardware. For this tournament and all following I used two Mendecino (Celeron) PC’s on 433MHz with 64Mb RAM. Time controls were 30 minutes a player a game. The results of the A tournament leave no doubt. Under the same conditions Crafty is no match for the best commercial programs. (*remark: it ended last, Fritz 5.32 was first, then junior 5 and Chessmaster 6000 – JIMvD) Even under computer programs it’s tactically very strong, but regarding mobility of pieces and some endgames it is not really up to the rest. I have to add that this is only the result of one tournament, and that is much too less. In tournament C (*remark: also 30,0 where Crafty ended second together with Fritz 6, Junior 4.6, only after Junior 5 at one– JIMvD) you will see that Crafty indeed can be very dangerous. But my opinion about the weak points didn’t change because of that result. The program is not into full balance and will experience peaks to one side or the other because it sometimes stumbles upon a tactical windfall” So far. So it’s not: “a bad program, don’t use this fluffy stuff”, but “it is a very strong freeware program, of which I think that at moments is playing not consistent enough.” It is not that well *balanced* over the game as a whole,that’s the bottom line.. Fair if you consider the fact that Crafty is the typical development project. Hard if you’re the programmer, as we are all mere humans wanting only compliments. The other programs get their share of critic as well. His conclusion BTW is that Nimzo 7.32 is the most well balanced program in all stages of the game, although that doesn’t show from the tournament results. Basically he is looking at a program that plays balanced throughout the game, keep that in mind while interpreting the results. It is one way of testing and evaluating, not only looking at points and tournament results. -- Jeroen ;-} ------------------------------- That ChessBrat @: jimvandorp@wxs.nl http://zip.to/jeroen ICQ#45740870 -------------------------------
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