Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: To the good Dr. Hyatt about my match CT vs. Crafty

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:39:14 03/13/01

Go up one level in this thread


On March 13, 2001 at 00:03:19, ERIQ wrote:

>first I would like to say that I do not understand how the match was not fair. I
>hear two main complaints:
>
>1) The book
>
>2) The learning being disabled
>
>my answer to 1) is that Yes the book did not favor crafty, but it did not favor
>CT either as it was CA. 5.1's book. is it good or bad, frankly I'm no expert on
>the subject but as both programs had to get both sides of the same or simular
>line, I fail to see how either program gets advantage ! It just proves that one
>of them could deal with a bad hand better than the other. In short they both had
>the same problem lines.

This doesn't matter at all.  A chess program is a combination of the code,
the books, and anything else it uses (tablebases, etc) to play the game.  In
the case of your match, there was no variability.  If you think playing the
same games over and over proves anything, feel free to continue.  I don't take
such matches seriously, however, because I realize they are _badly_ flawed.





>
>I noticed also that crafty had good position right out of the opening in several
>of the games but as time went on and sometimes got short It loss. A human master
>(fide 2400) would have beaten CT in a few of those games or at worst drawn a
>few.
>
>My answer to 2) how much is the learning feature going to really help in only 10
>games anyway, sorry this just sound like a cop out too me. But anyway Crafty
>reached equal postions in almost all the games. It seemed to go astray more in
>the late middle game, and in the end game, even in what I thought was winning
>postions out of the opening.

It will help a significant amount.  Otherwise I would never have written the
learning code.  Crafty doesn't like the Sicilian particularly, which is why
it only rarely plays it on ICC.  And as a result, it doesn't particularly
play it very well.  But after playing a number of such games over time, it
does learn that it does poorly in some of the variations and turns those off.

If you want to play matches with a strange book, feel free. But you should
also play games with one pondering, the other not.  With two different machines
that are way different in speed, etc.  Because the overall result is just as
bad..




>
>Don't get me wrong I do like Crafty I have it as an engine in CA and on the
>linux side of my box, but this is not the first match I've seen it take a
>beating from that tiger at 5:00 min game. It just looks like CT is a better
>blitzer. I've played other matches like 10:00 min game and up and Crafty has won
>or been even, but at blitz it alway seems to come up short against CT.

Tiger may well be a better blitzer.  Or it might be a better blitzer in
that one opening.  Without book learning, you get the same games.  That
seems to be pointless.



>
> I think this time Crafty just took a solid beating in ten games nothing more
>nothing less. But my point in displaying it was just to show that even the old
>tiger is still very very dangerous.
>
>PS. No teeth missing from that cat :)


Never thought there were.  But there _are_ "teeth" missing from Crafty.  Its
own book and book-learning to name just two.




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.