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Subject: Re: Permanent Brain ON vs Permanent Brain OFF

Author: Miguel A. Ballicora

Date: 10:19:27 07/27/01

Go up one level in this thread


On July 27, 2001 at 11:58:57, Uri Blass wrote:

>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 do not believe it, I think it is important to him. I bet that Bob receives a
lot of feedback and listen to his public. He might have higher priorities,
though.

>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.

Yes, but at that level people spend 6 months to improve their engine
20 elo points, you know, people here in CCC would kill for 20 points :-)

Regards,
Miguel



>
>Uri



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