Author: Mogens Larsen
Date: 00:04:01 05/11/00
Go up one level in this thread
On May 10, 2000 at 19:43:52, Eelco de Groot wrote: >That was just exactly my argument, the strength of the program as a whole (for >the sake of simplicity I'll consider that now as a combination of engine+timing >algorithm+book+learner) was not really what Chessfun and Christophe a.o. were >interested in. At least that's how I understand it. Also because to measure that >you would a. need a lot more games because of the noise introduced by opening >books and learners and b. it's not very significant because only the two >programs, Crafty and Fritz were tested. That's rather a small pool. If that had >been the object I'm sure Chessfun would have let more programs play. You are absolutely right, they were not interested in the strength of the programs involved. The reason why I complained, was that they did make comments about strength anyway. Despite the fact that it doesn't make sense. >Like I said I saw the object more to look at the influence of a. timecontrol and >b. pondering on the strength of a typical program but since these (a. and b.) >mainly influence the combination of 1. engine and 2. timing algorithm it pays >off to limit the influence of 3. book openings and 4. learners. Hence the Nunn >test. But other opening positions, for instance ones present in both books like >Christophe suggested, or early middlegame positions would have served too. >Jeroen Noomen did also prepare a set of reasonably balanced opening positions, >if somebody would want to carry out more tests like this I'm sure Jeroen would >want to e-mail them to interested parties. It's the principle involved, not the >particular positions. Again we agree on the purpose of the test. I made comments on the execution of the test and comparability of the results optained. At the time I didn't find that there were any, due to various uncertainties. Now Chessfun is very slowly starting to answer and/or explain some of them and therefore the results become more credible as time goes by. She's admitted that she cleared learning in some tests and not in others, which was one of my concerns. She tested the strain on cpu by other programs. She's also tried to explain the mysterious results, which she was reluctant to do before. However, better late than never. >You brought up that the autoplayer can also be a disturbing factor and that is >true of course. I didn't read the all the messages so I don't really know if >indications of autoplayer problems came up in the threads. Chessfun found errors in some of the autoplayer games, which was predictable. This makes the foundation of ponder on vs. ponder off results analysis somewhat shaky. >So I basically tried to ilustrate my reasoning about the downside of learners >and opening books and I hope you can follow my argument a bit. I can follow them most of the way, since I was hoping that the test would cover the suggestions you made. My main concern was the execution of the test and the conclusions made. >I wouldn't know if feelings got hurt, I'm sure you didn't mean to do that. >Surely Chessfun isn't discouraged so easily! I didn't intend to, but I don't think I'm going to be believed. No, I would doubt very much that Chessfun is discouraged in any way. >On a different subject, I think Jan Timman showed good foresight by going to >Bali and not play In the Dutch Championship. Not necessarily because of the >weather though, it's very good here! And not that it isn't interesting sofar but >I don't think the sponsors are very happy with the controversies either. Not >really any fault of Fritz or Frans though. The weather is very nice here as well and I even got sunburned playing soccer, but I would go to a sunny island with Judith Polgar any day (I wish) :o). Fritz got entangled in human stupidity at its worst, so Fritz or Frans can't be blamed in any way IMO. Thank you for constructive dialogue. Sincerely, Mogens
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