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Subject: Re: At 2 hours per move, which is strongest program?

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 01:12:11 01/11/01

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On January 10, 2001 at 21:29:17, stuart taylor wrote:
>On January 10, 2001 at 17:50:40, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>On January 10, 2001 at 07:26:35, stuart taylor wrote:
>>
>>>The question is all in the heading. I mean with hardware of about 450 mhz.
>>>upwards (till 1.2 ghz?).
>>>  This question is an ofshoot of Uri's comment that Rebel does better with more
>>>time.
>>> If you want to analyse a move for 2 hours, which program would have seen most
>>>(of what is important and relevant, and consequently play the strongest move) in
>>>those 2 hours. Or longer?
>>
>>Not only do we not know the answer to that question, we'll never even come close
>>to knowing.
>>
>>Calculate the time it would take to play 100 games between 2 engines.  Then,
>>multiply that by 30 high quality engines.  With 100 games, you will have an
>>enormous error bar.  So 1000 games will be more like it to find a really
>>accurate answer.
>>
>>At two hours per move, a computer won't play a whole lot better than at 40/2.
>>That's because of the exponential nature of chess.  By 40/2, most engines have
>>pretty well hit the wall.  You will probably get less than two additional plies
>>by running two hours.  If you let it run 24 hours, maybe another ply or two.
>>
>>I would suggest asking correspondence chess players.  Maybe Robin Smith can tell
>>us what he thinks about them, since he has faced many computer opponents.  Such
>>an evaluation would be subjective, but a lot better than a wild guess.
>
>
>You can try it a bit, or atleast test with test positions.
>I often used to play such long games between 2 programes.
>But Christophe Theron seems to claim very strongly indeed that doubling the
>speed adds about 70 elo points. So much so that he considers it a huge
>infringement of justice to give a much stronger program 450mhz to a much weaker
>programs 600mhz in a tournament.

Can you imagine someone so unfathomably lame and without a life that they would
spend literally millions of compute hours analyzing test positions with a
computer?!
[cough]

Anyway, the thing that answers most nearly is probably the KKUP contests, but
they have gone by the wayside since A.T. left.  Even so, it took months to
complete a single game.  On the other hand, it was great drama and I miss the
contests.  I'm too lazy to organize a new one, but if someone else wants to do
it, I would love to play in one.



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