Author: William Bryant
Date: 14:03:25 12/03/00
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On December 03, 2000 at 15:37:59, Richard A. Fowell wrote: >Now that there are five Macintosh chess programs compatible with >the ExaChess 2.0 umpire program (www.exachess.com) >- Screamer build 55 >- Vanessa Chess 2.01 >- Sigma Chess 5.1.2 >- Crafty 14.11 B >- ZZZZZZ 3.3 >it seems like a tournament would be in order. > >I was thinking of running a round robin tournament of >100 games per pairing at 5 seconds/move on my 7300/180 >(1 gig free HD space, 50 Mb free RAM). I want a lot of games to try >to get something with low variance on the statistics - this would yield >400 games per engine, which would be something like a +/-30 pt Elo tolerance >on the relative standings, I think. > >I understand that running a tournament like this, on a single machine >without pondering, may not be representative of their play under the >conditions the engines were designed for, but it seems to me more useful >to collect the data than not. > >I'd like suggestions on the settings to use for each engine >(unless I hear back, I'll use the default settings). >In particular >- what opening book? >- what tablebases? (I will definitely load the 3 and four man tablebases for > programs than use them, but I don't have the room to load the five man > tablebases. However, if there is a useful subset of the 5 man tablebases > that would fit within a gigabyte, I could do that. >- what hash table guidelines? I have only about 50 Mb of free RAM for > ExaChess and the two engines - I'll have to play to see what memory > partition that means for each engine. I assume that "as large as possible" > is the rule of the day for the hash tables (although, at 5 seconds/move > on my 180 MHz machine, small hash tables might be ample and more agile. >- what partition of available RAM for programs with multiple hash tables > (e.g., pawn and transposition). > >Please let me know what you think. > >-Richard For Screamer --use either opening book, although 1 is 'bigger' I'm not yet sure it is better under tournament conditions. --if you can't use all the 5 man EGTB's, don't use any of the 5 man EGTB's. Screamer is may not function well if there is a transition from one 5 man table base to a position that requires a missing one (ie a pawn promotion). Just use all the 3 and 4 man tablebases under that circumstance. --Screamer will try and use as much memory as you can allow it to have. Go For It. Remember -- Exachess has a bug in that it can't recognize a draw by insufficient material and it doesn't respond to a draw reply when supplied by the Engine. At least some of these games may hang because of it. It will require some operator intervention. If possible, save the games as an Exachess or PGN database for review. Thanks. William wbryant@ix.netcom.com
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