Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Crafty is Good Freeware, but no thanks I will stick to Junior and Fritz

Author: Jason Williamson

Date: 00:42:02 04/29/00

Go up one level in this thread


Wow, one of the first sensible posts on this dumb topic.  I wish people would
stop trolling and leave Bob and Crafty alone.  :)  Nice post Mr. Dorr.

Jason

On April 28, 2000 at 11:16:36, Christopher R. Dorr wrote:

>I have seen several people post the comment about Crafty's supposed inferiority
>to the commercials. I have not seen this. I am a fairly strong player (USCF Life
>Master), and play Crafty, Fritz, ChessMaster,and Rebel on a regular basis.
>Subjectively, Crafty seems at least as strong as the commercials. I know at
>least one other USCF Master who feels the same way.
>
>Objectively? Well, much of the data that has been posted here is in the form of
>'I tested Crafty vs. Fritz in the ChessBase interface and...'. Bob has pointed
>out how flawed this is, for a variety of reasons. Additionally, Bob has
>optimized Crafty to play against humans. So I think that perhaps we should weigh
>results vs. humans quite highly when evaluating the strength of any given
>program.
>
>Crafty has 'put it's money where it's mouth is' by playing on FICS and ICC.
>Scrappy has established the highest rating *ever* (human or computer)in ICC by
>achieving a blitz rating of 3395 on 4/26/2000, after several thousand games. If
>it were so evident that the commercials were superior, do you not think their
>owners would simply gain the record over Crafty, and use it for marketing
>purposes? I certainly would. It would only be logical. The simple fact is that
>in this *universally available* forum, *nobody* has demonstrated a superiority
>to Crafty. No humans, no computers. It would be simple to do so, no? If they
>truly were superior.
>
>Now you can say that the commercials have other advantages over Crafty....much
>better graphical interfaces (Winboard is nice, but there are better), better
>database features (Crafty has none), or better feature sets (Crafty was *just*
>designed to play chess)/ But I disagree that one can say that the strength of
>Crafty is inferior to the commercials. It all depends on how you choose to
>measure it. Crafty on it's optimized platform vs. Fritz6 on it's? Tossup. Crafty
>vs. Fritz on the Chessbase interface? Advantage Fritz. Fritz on a Quad Xeon 550
>vs. Crafty on a Quad Xeon 550? Advantage Crafty. Against humans? Against
>computers? Who knows. The only simple answer is that (in my opinion) none have
>demonstrated some incontovertable claim to be clearly superior to the others, in
>part for the reasons I have outlined above.
>
>Chris Dorr
>
>
>On April 28, 2000 at 00:01:05, Jerry Adams wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>  Like everyonelse I own crafty but I never play it, Personally I prefer the
>>commericial programs much, much better. Not to take anything away from Dr. Bob
>>or Crafty, I enjoy watching Crafty play on Icc against Grandmasters, one of my
>>favorites there is Singacrafty which I think is one of the few Programs on Icc
>>with a "Real Rating", since it will play anyone, it doesn't careful pick it's
>>opponents to gain rating points.  But let's be reasonable Folks crafty is simply
>>not in the same class as fritz, junior and chess tiger.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.