Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: How good is GNU Chess?

Author: Pete Galati

Date: 19:15:00 11/18/00

Go up one level in this thread


On November 18, 2000 at 20:05:41, Daniel Kang wrote:

>On November 18, 2000 at 19:50:57, Pete Galati wrote:
>>On November 18, 2000 at 18:23:25, Daniel Kang wrote:
>
>>>I was just thinking about hacking into the source code of GNU Chess but wanted
>>>to judge its strength beforehand. I'm running a 50-game match against crafty
>>>17.6 at 5 minutes per game with pondering off (on a single CPU, granted, a bit
>>>short) and it has now scored one draw in 38 games, losing all others. I
>>>deliberately widened Crafty's opening book usage (width 10) to make it fair for
>>>GNU Chess, for which I have no opening book.
>
>>You should let GNU use it's book, what you're doing doesn't make any sense to
>>me.
>
>It didn't come installed with a book, and I didn't quite bother enough to find a
>reasonable one (it might be a difficult task in itself) for a quick match. I
>wasn't intent on having a fair match, just something to judge its strength by.
>And I was just a bit surprised.
>
>>>Is it really this bad or am I just somehow using
>>>a weak version?
>
>>You don't say what version you're using, do you?  I like the new and the old
>>versions of GNUchess personally, but neither one would be capable of winning
>>very many games against Crafty, but it would happen occasionally, give it it's
>>book and that will give it a better chance, but Crafty is going to kick GNU up
>>and down the block anyhow.
>
>Oops, I forgot. It's 5.00 (October 15, 1999). Is there some kind of official
>opening book for GNUChess that I'm missing?

I'm not exactly sure if there is a book for 5.00 that comes with Winboard or
not, I think that when Tim first released it that it didn't work for some
reason, but I do know that there is a pgn intended for the book that comes along
with the source.  I lost track of where I got my book for it by now.  I'm pretty
sure that Dann Corbit has an opning book for his version, but I think he used
his own collection og pgn for it, but I'm not really sure if that matters all
that much because I have doubts that any serious thought went into the book for
that version.  I don't think it's a very polished program yet, but the code is a
lot cooler, and it probably has a great deal of potential in it, where as the
last version was just a confusing mess IMO.

>
>>>I didn't expect it to match Crafty, but barely managing one draw
>>>in 38 games was somewhat disappointing. Thanks.
>
>>I'm not surprised.
>
>Interesting. The score is now 42-1-1 in Crafty's favor. Do you know if there are
>any open-source programs with a comparable license (Crafty's is a bit too
>restrictive, in my opinion) worth looking into? Thanks again.
>
>Dan.

I don't know about the licensing on Phalanx, but that's a great program, very
slick program.  Not as strong as Crafty by a long stretch, but a lot stronger
than GNUchess.

Pete



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.