Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 15:17:45 08/07/98
Go up one level in this thread
On August 07, 1998 at 15:48:43, Shaun Graham wrote:
> Is there a trade off in strength that "can or perhaps does" occurs for
>programs that play blitz exceptionally well, when it comes to playing standard
>games? For instance Genius is held by many to be the best blitz player, my
>feeling is, that this is simply due to it's excessive tendency to play
>defensively(defense comes quick to genius). This makes it considerably more
>difficult to form a constructive plan of activity, which in the end results in
>opponents falling too short of time and losing. However this strength which
>makes it so great at blitz also is one of the main causes for it falling behind
>the other top programs(IMHO).
I think differently. Genius strength in blitz comes from its search algorithm.
Genius and its predecessors were designed to play the best on slow hardware
(Mephisto computers), and Lang's search was designed at that time. And was the
best.
The result is that Genius sees many long combinations instantly, but it has a
bigger branching factor. As time controls become longer, the branching factor
becomes a problem and other programs are able to go as deep, or even deeper than
Genius.
It is also possible that the defensive behaviour you describe comes from the way
the last plies of the search are treated. Computers moves are not processed in
the same way as opponent's in the last plies of the selective search. However I
don't think it is the reason why Genius is so good in blitz games.
Christophe
> Ferret at it's best had an astonishing 3129 blitz rating on ICC(it has a high
>standard rating as well)! I'm just wondering about this question because of the
>upcoming match with Marovic. Ed Shroeder mentioned that this match "would" tell
>us something more about how far programs are, for this to be the case it would
>seem necessary for ferret to be a top standard computer player. Is it? I
>personally think we could learn the most from a match with a bare bones average
>GM who maintains consistently a average rating of 2500. For the reason that a
>GM of Marovic's caliber might dessimate Ferret even if it does play at GM
>strength.
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