Author: John Merlino
Date: 14:18:14 11/16/00
Go up one level in this thread
On November 16, 2000 at 16:22:01, john watson wrote: >Chessmaster (the personality) was caught cheating against Gandalf (the >program)today, or to be more precise he got a priviledged treatment from his own >GUI. >Chessmaster-Gandalf 16 1 3 >It's a pity I didn't keep the .pgn but it was a real mock-up. >Chessmaster must have hogged the PC. >The very same Gandalf , that is one of the champs of the Winboard and Chessbase >Gui's, with the same settings, made moves a kid wouldn't make. >Probably the default is: >Chessmaster always ponder on >The winboarders always ponder off >Also, it seems Chessmaster gets a time bonus for being a native personality , >what is apparently done on purpose to put Chessmaster in a good light and not >due to the fact that the path is a couple of folders shorter. >And when Chessmaster after all get's into a tough position, the operator is >asked to call the game a draw. He probably threw one game to keep him honest. >On 2 PC's of comparable strength the result of the tournament may be the >opposite. You are incorrect on most (if not all) counts. The communication between The King and the main app is identical to the communication between any WinBoard engine and the main app. Therefore, there is no "time bonus", because The King is not a "native" personality. The "pipes" are identical. Nor does Chessmaster "hog the PC". In testing, the development team found that both engines (whether or not they are The King) receive between 45 and 49% (fluctuating, with an average of 47 or 48%) of the CPU at all times, assuming that pondering is on for both engines. When pondering is OFF for both engines, than it is between 90 and 98% for the engine that is thinking and 1% for the engine that is waiting. Other applications (including the CM main app) account for the remainder. If Gandalf was making poor moves, then Gandalf was probably not initialized properly. Chessmaster's default IS to have pondering on, but it is up to the user to change this, obviously. If Gandalf's pondering was off, and Chessmaster's was on, then this is obviously a discrepancy that must be dealt with before a reasonable tournament can be run. As for the operator being "asked to call the game a draw", I really have no idea what you are talking about here. Who is this operator? Who was asking for the draw? The King will NEVER offer a draw, NOR will it resign. Nor, in a comp vs. comp game, can the human moderator DECLARE a game a draw within the Chessmaster GUI (for example, by using the "Offer Draw" menuitem), because this feature does not work if it is not a human's turn to move. Therefore, you need to clarify this statement before I can comment on it. jm
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