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Subject: Re: Permanent Brain ON vs Permanent Brain OFF

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 08:58:57 07/27/01

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On July 27, 2001 at 11:18:08, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote:

>On July 26, 2001 at 14:41:54, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On July 26, 2001 at 12:55:06, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote:
>>
>>>On July 26, 2001 at 10:43:45, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On July 26, 2001 at 09:56:24, Matthias Gemuh wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Hi Robert,
>>>>>
>>>>>I think you just wanted to make a joke. We all know that PONDER OFF hurts nobody
>>>>>(Fritz used its full time). PONDER ON on one CPU is very appropriate to arrive
>>>>>at wrong engine comparasons.
>>>>>
>>>>>Regards,
>>>>>Matthias.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Nope... no joke at all.  Two programs, one machine, my preference is ponder=on.
>>>>both will get 1/2 of the machine and the time controls won't be screwed up.
>>>>
>>>>ponder=off exposes the opportunity for a program to get into time trouble
>>>>because it assumes it will save time with ponder=on when it really can't since
>>>>it is disabled...
>>>
>>>Why the program should assume that it will save time in with ponder=on when
>>>it knows that it is off already?
>>>Shouldn't a program take this into account?
>>>If ponder=off is an option for the program, it should notice the difference
>>>and act accordingly IMHO.
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>
>>
>>because in my case, 99.9% of all games played have ponder=on.  I only disable
>>pondering to debug so that I can reproduce the same searches over and over
>>when necessary.  Since almost all real games are played with ponder=on, I don't
>>have a special time-allocation formula for ponder=on and another one for
>>ponder=off.  I just have one that _assumes_ ponder=on.
>>
>>I see no reason to waste what little time I have working on something that is
>>hardly going to be used...
>
>Well, it is used a lot actually by lots of people already. Most of the people
>are running matches with ponder=off for some reasons.
>If both engines were tuned for ponder=off, it will be the best condition to
>optimze the resources since time used pondering is never as good a time used
>thinking. For instance, you have a competitive mindset in your answer but if my
>purpose is to run a match between engines to learn a particulat opening, I want
>my resources to be used as efficient as possible. That is ponder=off for both.
>Maybe you could consider making Crafty to be able to process "ponder=off"
>accordingly because there will be users that would benefit from it.
>
>Regards,
>Miguel

Crafty is not a commercial program so I guess that the way that users use it is
not important for Bob.

I also do not think that the difference between ponder on and ponder off is more
than 20 elo in most of the practical cases.

Uri



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