Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 10:53:03 12/29/99
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How to measure what "best" means is difficult "at best." Consider human players. Is the world champion the best or is Kasparov? Is Anand better than Shirov? I think (probably and only in my opinion) that Kasparov is the best player in the world. But I could be wrong. And we have a very large number of games available to make a decision. Now, the SSDF values hold for exactly: 0. The machines used 1. The programs used with that particular time control and settings 2. The method of play used And we still have a large uncertainty. The WMCCC champion is a proclaimed champion, like A. Khalifman of FIDE who may or may not be the best player in the world. and B. Gulko of USCF who may or may not be the best player in the US. In any case, we know both of them are darned good players. Test suites like BS2830 try to measure ELO and do manage to measure some form of tactical prowess. But how neatly does this map to playing strength? Really, nobody knows. Another measure of strength is the rankings on ICC or FICS. Yet another is the results from Winboard tournaments like those defined at: http://f11.parsimony.net/forum16635/ Quite frankly, all the programs are very, very strong. The tactical ability is probably GM strength [maybe even super-GM] and the only real weakness is long term strategy. Since all of them will beat the pants off of anybody but an IM or better (and still give IM's and GM's a hard time) strength should probably be the least of our worries. Really, we might be better served by looking at the sort of analysis features that are offered and database capabilities. In short, the best program is the one that is best for you. As far as strongest, nobody knows -- really. For computer verses computer play, the SSDF list is probably the finest tool. But if you don't understand some statistics, it would be foolish to try to draw conclusions from it. In particular, any of the top ten programs could easily be better than the others by simple examination of a single standard deviation.
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