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Subject: Re: Since the Opening is NOT that important in FRC and HIARCS is leading

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 08:21:09 01/26/04

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On January 26, 2004 at 10:49:02, Jorge Pichard wrote:

>Since the Opening is NOT that important in FRC and HIARCS is leading, the
>positional understanding of HIARCS is much higher than the rest.

No, this does not follow.  It is perfectly possible that the evaluation function
in Hiarcs is just better at handling the unusual opening positions you see in
FRC than the evaluation function in the other top engines.

For instance:  If I make an FRC version of my engine some time soon (which is
likely), I will rewrite parts of my evaluation function.  In particular, the
way I evaluate development makes no sense at all in FRC, and should be replaced
with new and very different code.  This change will help greatly in FRC, but
make my engine very slightly weaker in normal chess.

>There is clear indication that with a better opening book, HIARCS could be
>the leader in SSDF as well.

I disagree again.  A better way to do this is to run a series of Nunn matches
against the other top programs.

Don't get me wrong; I am not trying to knock Hiarcs.  Hiarcs is an
awesome chess program, and based on the games I have seen it play it is
easily my favorite among the commercial engines.  I don't think I have
ever looked forward to the release of a new chess program as much as
I currently look forward to Hiarcs for PalmOS.  In short, I am a great
fan of Hiarcs.  But that it narrowly defeats the other top engines in
an FRC tournament only indicates that it is probably a better FRC
engine than its competitors, nothing more.  You can't use this to make
conclusions about its positional understanding.

Tord




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