Author: Mark Longridge
Date: 03:12:49 01/20/01
Go up one level in this thread
On January 20, 2001 at 04:12:36, Sune Larsson wrote: >On January 20, 2001 at 02:54:13, Pete Galati wrote: > >>On January 20, 2001 at 02:38:57, Mark Longridge wrote: >> >>>Some of the programs, crafty and gandalf come to mind, let their clocks run down >>>pretty low (say as low as 30 seconds) near where the game would normally be >>>close to over. But if the other player is just shuffling wood back and forth and >>>is playing with an inc, that player can build up a huge time advantage. Crafty >>>tries too hard to avoid the 50 move rule, and all of a sudden it's got 25 >>>seconds left and a lost position. >>> >>>I bet a lot of GM's and some programs do this on purpose. I don't see why crafty >>>shouldn't go for the 50 move rule instead of a silly pawn push, especially when >>>it's time is so low. Now the silly draws are becoming silly losses. >>> >>>If the score is -.60 and it's close to the 50 move rule, I figure the computer >>>may as well take the draw... especially when down to it's last 30 seconds. >> >>Well, if you ARE beating Crafty this way, essentially you're not so much beating >>it in a game of Chess anyhow. > > Right, if you use a chessprogram this way, there are imo reasons to > question your own drives and motives for doing so. As I see it, it has > anyway very little to do with developing your own chess. Playing these > programs are interesting for me but repeating winning setups are not > what I call creativity. For example I had 2 nice wins vs CM8, as black > in a closed KI with following king's attack. Now, this work is done and > personally I will avoid these lines vs CM in the future. Remember with > much more satisfaction a Kn vs B ending - a pawn up - which was possible > to transform into a win vs CM. Constantly closing positions and slowly > building king's attacks is a well known anti computer strategy. But since > these things are known, and hopefully worked upon by the authors, I personally > find it boring to repeat them once more. > One final thing about CM8: Due to following reasons I find it easier to > play than various other top programs: > > 1) Very limited and small opening book. > 2) Dubious time management (known and will be fixed) > 3) Just 1 Mb hash tables as default and no way to easily > adjust it without creating a new personality. Really > quite unbelieavable, cause it was possible in CM6. > 4) No tablebases for the endgame. > > Still, if you get your pieces out in a wrong way you can get busted > heavily as a cruel reminder of your own stupidity...;) > > Sune Larsson > > >> >>I shuffle pieces sometimes, but it's pretty much an effort to toy with the >>program for a while and see how it reacts when I try to distract it, but I'm not >>under the impression that I'm beating the program, more like throwing pesty >>distractions at it, but I'm not good enough to make my distractions work. >> >>Are you actually winning games this way against Crafty, or is this just a theory >>of yours? >> >>Pete I am not beating up crafty, I'm only observing crafty's games against other computers with very fast hardware. Perhaps the only solution is to match hardware with hardware. But that pawn push close to move 50 was too much. I thought it could draw without trying to trade pieces or move pawns. It was to it's advantage not to do either. But it seems with an inc, crafty could have allocated more time to long games, e.g. games with over 100 moves. Instead it's time just got lower and lower, and eventually it just ran out of time to think (at least that is what it seemed to me). It was a 4 15 game. But I have seen other humans play like this vs. crafty clones with some success. The position stays in balance, and a relatively easy draw is achieved. I am not personally playing crafty and beating it this way, and I'm not suggesting this as a way for a human to beat computers. I'm only suggesting a possible way of making the program (e.g. crafty) avoid a possible time management problem.
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