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Subject: Re: Strongest new program releases

Author: Peter Berger

Date: 10:49:50 11/09/00

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On November 09, 2000 at 12:47:42, Christophe Theron wrote:

>Then you should value more the SSDF games than the tournament games.
>
>The author will not be with you in your home and help YOUR copy of the program
>to play better. Generally, you know, the author is not provided in the program's
>package.
>
>If you want the best program you can run on YOUR computer, the SSDF tells you
>much better than tournament games.
>
>
>
>    Christophe
>

I couldn't disagree more !

Who actually buys chessprograms to let them conduct endless series of autoplayed
games on multiple computers against each other looking only for the scores ? I
agree for them the SSDF results might be of major importance . But I also
seriously doubt that there are more than 100 people throughout the world that
form this very special market segment .

The tournament games obviously can't do that either , OK . But there I can be
sure everybody did its best for utmost performance and watch what is the result
( games being more important than results ) . This can give me a vague idea what
kind of beast I can expect on my computer when it is released.

The number of debatable solutions for technical problems in autoplayed games
decided by various people ( like : Junior gets the Fritz book today ; Computer
crashed , so computers were swapped between programs near the end of match (
this two examples posted here I remember at once ) shouldn't be underestimated .
 I have tried a few winboard tournaments myself for example and although nothing
very special happened there are _always_ situations that need to be decided like
: what to do with the aborted game ? Which engine gets which tablebases ? Which
hash settings are used ? It is only logical to assume that mistakes are involved
. Most games on SSDF are secret too btw , so how can you get any profit for your
decision which is the _best_ program for you ??

What makes up for that to some extent is the huge number of games .

Also : is the 40/2h time control really of importance when you try to find out
the best program "on YOUR computer" for _your_ needs ?? Again : I don't think so
.

I think there are very little sources to find out about the best program for you
on your computer .

First question to answer would be : what do you want to do with it ? IMO .

Anwers to that and the resulting following questions would result in better
decisions and maybe even better programs but then we meet "Joe User" again :-)

pete









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