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Subject: Re: CM8K personality tourney results-120 games

Author: John Merlino

Date: 09:18:33 04/10/01

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On April 10, 2001 at 01:50:29, Paul Doire wrote:

>Hardware:541Mhz celeron 128 mb ram win98se
>G/5, All engines have 32 MB Hash except CM default.
>All engine settings found here at this site
>
>Results:              W    D    L    Games    Score
>CM KKND 32H           10   8    6      24      14.0
>Chessmaster(default)   7   12   5      24      13.0
>CM 32H                 7    9   8      24      11.5
>CM DEEP 32H(Kostick bk)6   10   8      24      11.0
>CM 8777 32H            5   11   8      24      10.5
>
>CM KKND is clearly stronger in this sampling.
>I have also played many offhand games with CM KKND against
>Gambit Tiger 2...G/5 same pc ponder on, and CM KKND appears
>to win 60-70% of the time!

This (in some way) goes to prove one VERY IMPORTANT point that Johan and I have
stated time and time again. A 32MB hash table is 31MB too many for a G/5 game!
Johan uses the general rule of thumb of 1 byte per average position searched per
move. Since, on the average, CM8000 searches between 50K and 100K moves per
second (depending on processor speed -- your Celeron is going to be closer to
50K), this means that, unless the engine is going to have more than 10 seconds
average PER MOVE, there is NO REASON for anything more than a 1MB hash table.
Johan believes that, unless you're on a very fast processor, a 1MB hash table is
fine for everything up to G/10.

The reason for the point that I'm making is that, with each new move, CM clears
out its hash table. A 32MB hash table takes approximately 1/2 second to clear.
In a G/5 game that goes 80 moves, this means that the engine has lost 40
seconds, compared to a personality with an appropriate 1MB hash table. This
explains why the default personality had a better score than the 32MB version of
the default personality.

HOWEVER, the next version of the patch (due out very soon), is going to fix this
problem to some degree. Johan has made the clearing of the hash table almost
"instant", meaning that using a too large hash table in a blitz game will no
longer be a detriment.

As for your stating that KKND is "clearly stronger", I see absolutely no
evidence of that -- 1 point in a 24 game tournament? This is, statistically,
meaningless.

jm



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