Author: Thorsten Czub
Date: 07:32:27 02/16/02
Go up one level in this thread
On February 16, 2002 at 09:37:31, Bertil Eklund wrote: >On February 16, 2002 at 09:23:16, Torsten Schoop wrote: > >>A1200 vs. K6-450 is nonsense IMOP. >> >>Torsten > >Yes it is nonsense to play in tournaments with players 150 elo above or under >yourself too. > >Bertil you don't understand the difference between computerchess and humanchess. in a tournament, it makes sense to play against weaker or stronger PLAYERS. it makes even sense to play in a tournament one or 2 games shredder6 1200mhz versus shredder6 450 mhz. but it makes NO sense , and here torsten is IMO right, to try a match program X versus program X' with X on 1200 and X' on 450mhz. chess programs are not players in a common sense. they are a special form of players. a subgroup. because they produce nearly similar results when the search depth is similar. so giving program X 6 plies and giving program X' 8 plies will make X' win. human players do not think SIMILAR since the human brain is a quantum mechanic kind of computer. so even when you have a TWIN , say bobby fischer against his brother (if he would have a twin brother) it would NOT be as similar and clear as if you have 2 programs. Even if you would clon bobby fischer, his brain would still be a quantum mechanics kind of computer brain. and this is NOT the same as a primitive computer where every event can be repeated. the program X is so similar to program X' that the results between them is NOT showing a real playing strength difference. the same problem you have when you decrease time controls. say, you let n computer-programs play y games against each other in a time control of 1' or 2' or even 5' per game blitz. call this engine tournament a blitz tournament. you will NOT get senseful results, because you do not measure the playing strength of the chess programs, but instead you measure how fast the search tree of the programs is build to come deeper. so in fact you measure not chess strength but the WAY the chess strength is build. and the problems get even bigger when the user-interface you want to test the FAIR engine competition (lets say i am using a chess-base interface like fritz, junior, nimzo or whatever GUI) is NOT giving all engines the same resources of the pc. then in fact you can play a big engine tournament, and most often the people play short time controls to get many games :-))) that in the end, as a result the whole engine-tournament is nearly nonsense. because the NOISE that gets produced by the circumstances taking action in the measurement, that you don't get the real strength, but instead a noisy up and down of results. this is the opposite of beeing scientific. thats making an idiot out of the reader of such a statistic. if you want to find out about strength, you must make sure the competition is fair. that means the results have to be reproducable. and you have to protocol the games. and the machines have to be identical. and double or tripple games have to be deleted out of the statistic, you must make sure, in general spoken, that the amount of noise that tries to influence the result is as small as possible. what worries me much is that shredder was unable to win a tournament where Mr.Utzinger or his friend played, and shredder was on the other hand able to reach the top of your list. there is something stinking in the fact that a program is making number ONE in matches in sweden, and making the last rank in a tournament in austria. i don't believe in this heavy dispersion. one of you has a bug or a problem somewhere. since mr.utzinger played on ONE machine, it cannot be that he used non-identical resources. and since the ranking of his other programs and the games seem to be normal , from my point of view, the reason why shredder6 won in sweden can only be in the learning or in the permanent brain taking influence. or - in the autoplayer :-)) whatever. somethings wrong here.
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