Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:44:31 03/20/00
Go up one level in this thread
On March 20, 2000 at 06:08:22, James T. Walker wrote: >On March 19, 2000 at 04:28:53, Steffen Jakob wrote: > >>Hi! >> >>Does anybody have an as complete as possible list of handles of original engines >>which are playing at ICC? I think about allowing - at least temporary - only >>orginal programs (and some selected clones like "Beadle") to play Hossa, because >>I saw too many games against clones in the last weeks. >> >>Best wishes, >>Steffen. > >Hello Steffen, >I'm having trouble understanding why programmers on ICC want to limit who their >programs play. Crafty is complaining about playing too many Chess Tiger clones >and Scrappy does not want to play computers except at long time controls(If I >understand the formulas --It's possible I do not). I know Bob wants to maximize >his programs vs GM's but let's be honest, most GM's are easier to beat than >programs like Fritz or Tiger or Junior. Is it the rating points that drive >everything on ICC? Are the rating points so precious that programmers have to >select who they play in order to maximize the points? No... you miss the point _totally_. First, I am completely baffled why everyone wants to run a chess engine on ICC? I can't imagine a bigger waste of time and resources, for those that are running engines "just because". Some of us are actively developing the programs, and use ICC as a test bed. Those of you that are doing this "just because" are doing two things: (1) you are draining away the very GM players that I want to play; (2) you fill my game logs with nothing but games vs a specific program. I implemented the Tiger restriction when someone pointed out that the last 20 games Crafty had played at one point were against 5 different Tiger clones. Playing one program over and over is not something I want to do, as my goal is not to develop an engine tuned to play against Tiger, but rather to produce an engine tuned to play against IM/GM players. I put !computer in scrappy's formula for that reason... it seems that "some" thought it perfectly ok to play the max games vs crafty, then switch over to scrappy and do it again. Since I run both, and look at the games, I decided that I would simply prevent computers from playing scrappy period, and restrict the number of games vs any single program to no more than 4. I really don't care whether anyone likes my policies on ICC or not. I'm not doing this for anyone but _me_. I find it strange that several people want to complain about my computer policy, yet they are not working on any engine at all, but rather are just playing something on ICC that they bought off the shelf. Again, I don't see the point. IE why not buy a copy of Oracle, and just do the same query over and over and over? Burns just as many computer cycles, accomplishes just as much for the improvement of Oracle as it does for the improvement of an engine, and it would ease the program 'glut' on ICC that has drastically cut down on the number of games legitimate program developers are seeing each day... > Is everything done on ICC >to make your program "Look" stronger than it really is? Why do the computer >operators on ICC seem to take everything personal as if they have been violated >when their programs lose? Don't you learn more from a loss than from beating >someone that blundered the game away? Rather than asking what _I_ learn, how about explaining what _you_ are learning? Did you write the code? Are you supporting the author's testing by sending him all the games/logs so that he can learn what is going on? > Don't the losses show you more places to >improve your program than the blunders by opponents? Of course I'm not a >programmer so I'm having trouble relating to the formulas and finger notes >designed to limit who plays and how many games can be played. >Jim Walker I'm having a completely different problem understanding all this, myself. What in the world is so intellectually challenging about running a program written by someone else? What is the purpose? And why is it that a a legitimate engine author _must_ either play such clones or else we are somehow behaving badly by not wanting to play such a clone over and over and over? Explain to me where I am thinking wrong here...
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