Author: Ricardo Gibert
Date: 01:46:10 05/31/01
Go up one level in this thread
On May 30, 2001 at 13:57:54, Dana Turnmire wrote: > This article appeared in the 1996 issue of Computer Reports and was written >by Michael Byrne. It shows me the only fair way to find an engines true >strength is WITHOUT the opening book. [snip] I disagree. If you compare programs without their book, you will create a different kind of problem. A programs eval can aslo be tuned with respect with the book they have. In other words, the book steers the position towards the type of position that the programs eval can assess accurately. This is perfectly legitimate. Human players do the same. As a human player, I try to play openings that steer the game towards positions that suit my style. If you test without book. The programs will end up in types of positions they would normally not get into. You will not get a true measure of their playing strength. What you will measure is the ability of program to analyze an arbitrary position. This is worthwhile to know if that is how you are going to use a program, but it should not be confused with playing strength. They are not really the same. If a program is susceptable to "rigged" opening books, that is the programs weakness and is fair game to take advantage of. Such programs should be enhanced so that they are less susceptable to such an attack. The way programs are currently tested and assessed encourages programmers to develop countermeasures. From this point of view, it is clear that the current way of testing is really just fine. Creating an artificial setting to test programs will only result in artificial results playing strength-wise.
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