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Subject: Re: Spitfire(Gambit 2.0) Highest rated comp. on ICC

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 18:29:51 07/08/01

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On July 08, 2001 at 19:13:10, Peter Berger wrote:

>I agree to Bruce Moreland's post and yours of course .
>
>Does anyone still remember the time when Ferret competed day and night at  ICC
>and its formula then btw ;-) ?
>
>The statement that the formulas of the rank mongers steal the titled players
>from the rest who are set up to face anyone is most obviously true though .
>
>pete

Its formula varied.  For a while I had it set to play within 3 or 4 hundred
points.  There was a time when that included only one or two people, and I
started getting complaints.  I never had it set to be !computer, although I got
mad and noplay'd a few operators who did things that bothered me.

Its blitz formula for the past several years has been, in English, "anyone
within 300 points, computer or human, and any human over 2500."

So if it is super-high rated it won't serve as fodder for computer operators who
just got their hot new machine, and it will still play the top 850 or so players
on the server.  And if it's gone through a bad stretch and is low-rated, it will
still play down quite a ways.

It will also play unrated games with approximately anyone, as long as they are
quick games.

300 points is pretty narrow for computers now.  At the time, it wasn't, because
3000 was a big deal and most computers could get to 2600 or 2700.

I felt that this struck a balance between being too restrictive and no
restrictive enough.  If I were to let it play rated with anyone, low-rated
people would play it for hours in the hopes of getting 32 points for beating it,
and those games were boring.  Letting people play it unrated meant that they
could play it, but they'd have to play it for the game, rather than for the
payoff.

I think that my program was one of the few that would not play 3 0 or 4 0.  I
think those time controls are too fast and my program will not play them rated.

bruce



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