Author: Ian Osgood
Date: 12:14:05 04/01/99
Go up one level in this thread
On April 01, 1999 at 12:25:15, Stuart Cracraft wrote:
>
>Maybe it's just my imagination but having been
>working on a program that tests on FICS, I've had
>a devil of a time getting the rating up signficantly
>over 2000 on the FICS server. Usually it will get
>up to 2010-2040 and then evoke some interesrt in
>some stronger types and get pounded down to 1970-2000
>before it creeps up enough to get the stronger ones
>interested again (re-pounding, etc.)
>
>What's special about 2000 on FICS? Maybe just a typical
>barrier for a program?
What is the handle of your program?
Typically, computers modify their formula to roughly select their opposition.
Specifically,
a) assesswin > k to avoid dropping points to low rated sandbaggers
and in general play higher rated players.
b) !computer to avoid getting crushed by 400MHz crafties
c) inc > k if your computer behaves badly at small search depths
In addition, many computers will refuse playing more than
n games in a row with the same person to avoid repeated losses.
When I researched formulas a while ago, I found that programs with !computer
and assesswin>0 were on average 100 points higher for the same processor speed.
>If there is (or isn't) anything special about it,
>then I'm wondering what I could do short of
>increasing my hardware. It's an old Pentium 133mhz
>but I don't want to spend the money to upgrade it
>and would rather improve the program.
What did you expect? For comparison, Iodine is gnuchess on a P100,
with assesswin > 1, and it maxes out at 2156. PoorGnu on a P120 with
assesswin > 0 maxed out at 2242 but is currently under 2000. Note that neither
have !computer.
An account I run is SapphireII. It is a high quality program, but runs at only
32 MHz. It is routinely crushed by everything running on P166 or better except
for a few rank amateur programs. (This is actually pretty good! Kittinger
wrote some mean assembly.) Search depth is everything in comp-comp games.
Faster processors prevail in the long run.
Get an upgrade. K6's are good, cheap chess processors. (IMHO, G3's are the
best chess processors.)
>The usual: PVS, null-move, hashing. Evaluation consists
>of about 50 terms. Evaluation is done at the leafs
>rather than pc/sq style for the most part. If you
>need further details, feel free to ask. Code available.
>
>--Stuart
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