Author: Jeroen van Dorp
Date: 15:28:15 04/26/00
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>No, but if he believes that Crafty does well _only_ because it has superior >hardware, then that same superior hardware should make _any_ program do well, >unless the semantics of the English language have changed more than I >realize. Bob, please keep the same academic exactness with your reading as with developing Crafty :) Don't get swept away. I thought it good to reproduce the whole paragraph from the article, just to show that the KC review is a bad piece of text crunching, and that it's not as bad as it seems there. It didn't help, I realize that now. I'm among the believers. Is that the goal of this discussion board? Whta's gone wrong? "Let's test all programs on the same hardware, because I don't know what the high ratings on ICC mean *in comparison* to other top programs on different (slower) hardware" gets *mutilated* to "Crafty is only strong because it's on superiour hardware, for the rest it's a lousy program". I'm not interested in accusing or defending De Gorter, just becoming more and more curious why there is such a strange reaction from people here to critics on Crafty. I would be glad instead. It must be my problem, no doubt. As a Dutchman you can guess I'm no expert om English semantics, and reading the article in Dutch and translating it can be awkward, but I think in this respect my translation is okay. He *does not* say Crafty deserves its high rating because of the superior hardware. He tells us: I saw Crafty online is very strong. But it is running on this superfast hardware. It's difficult to say something about relative strenght if you don't test on the same hardware. He is right. Most programs don't swallow dual or quad processors; Crafty does, but then you should compare a quad 500 for Crafty with Fritz on let's say a Celeron 333. Well then, how should you compare it with top commercial hardware? Let's all test them on the same hardware, be it "superiour", " regular" or "obsolete". That's the base line. Maybe that's wrong. Say so. About all his conclusions, I have my own thoughts, but I think they're not interesting. If I were you, I would be happy with every piece of commentary on my program. Maybe I understand it wrong, but I consider Crafty a development project, boosting computer chess in general. The last *is* true, as a lot of top comemrcial programs pay respect in their programming to Crafty. You know that better than anyone. De Gorter says: Nimzo 7.32 is the most balanced playing program, Crafty plays unbalanced. If I were *you* I could come up with: 1. it's version 16.6, I know that, been there, done that, old stuff; 2. that's strange, show me those games, tell me those settings, not only from Crafty, but from Nimzo 7.32 as well. Let me validate your results. More proof please, no vague interpretations; 3. I will show you that superiour hardware does not affect performance that much. Only a few possibilities. Maybe I'm wrong and Crafty is just a private love baby, with you not interested in progress. Maybe you're only looking for compliments, who knows. I guessed not. I did scientific research myself. I know that discarding critic emotionally is as bad as accepting results from a few tournaments or some uncontrolable observations. It's both the end of science. Prove me wrong. Jeroen ;-}
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