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Subject: Re: A suggestion for the ssdf.

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 10:10:31 08/30/00

Go up one level in this thread


On August 29, 2000 at 08:16:07, Uri Blass wrote:

>On August 29, 2000 at 01:53:38, Paul Petersson wrote:
>
>>On August 28, 2000 at 16:05:08, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>1)I suggest you stop using old programs like Fritz3 or Junior5 as players in the
>>>ssdf list.
>>>
>>>The reason is very simple
>>>
>>>It is possible to get 100% result against program like Junior5 only by opening
>>>preperation(It takes a long time but I believe that it is possible by using the
>>>autoplayer to play thousands of games and save the winning games as part of the
>>>opening book)
>>>
>>>Nobody did it in the past but I think that it is better to prevent problems
>>>before they happen and not after they happen.
>>
>>Why would someone invest so much time and resourses to book against an opponent
>>that you can't even be sure you're going to play. It doesn't make any sense.
>
>Junior5 is only one example.
>It is possible to do the same against other old programs and you can be sure you
>will go to play against some of them.
>
>I believe that it is possible to get 50-100 elo improvement in the ssdf list by
>this idea.
>
>You do not need more time but only more computers.
>
>If you have 20 identical computers and you use them for comp-comp games 24 hours
>a day you can build a killer book against a lot of old programs.
>
>
> The
>>effort required is huge compaired to the small gains that could be had. The
>>reason you haven't seen anyone trying it is probably because it's a bad idea.
>>
>>>2)I think that it will be better if the list will include only programs like
>>>Shredder,Junior,Fritz,Crafty without a version number when you always use the
>>>latest public version.
>>
>>We don't always use the latest version. For Crafty it is 17.07 not 17.11. Next
>>year we'll use another version. The same as for all other programs. Using only
>>the name without version number would most likely cause confusion and an endless
>>number of questions.
>
>I think that the customers will enjoy from it because programmers will be
>encouraged to always sell their best engine.
>
>This is not the situation today and people cannot buy shredder 4.22 but only
>shredder4 and the same for other programs.
>
>The rating rules say that the latest games are the important games so the rating
>of programs is mainly influenced by the latest version.
>
>Uri


I am not too worried about any of this.  All it means is that Crafty will always
be a bit lower on the SSDF than it really should be.  If you take commercial
engines that are released once or twice per year, after extensive beta testing
and tuning, you get a pretty solid program.  If you take one of my versions that
are released 10-20 times per year with no beta testing of any kind except by me
on the chess servers, there will be more cases of bad (and some good, too)
versions in the list.  I don't intend on changing to a once-per-year release
schedule, as I try lots of new ideas and get feedback more quickly the way
things are being done now...

I was simply making a suggestion that the SSDF might recognize the difference
between an annual release of a commercial engine and a weekly release of the
different freeware engines, and simply "always use the current version" whenever
possible.

It makes sense, whether it is done or not...



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