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Subject: Re: SSDF never asked you to use their lists!

Author: jonathan Baxter

Date: 16:19:55 06/15/98

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On June 15, 1998 at 15:03:27, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>The point is not nearly so much about the SSDF methods as is is about the
>greediness of chess programmers.  Once an experiment is started, and the
>details of the testing methodology become known, the experiment is over.
>That's why drug trials are "double-blind" in the US.  *no* one involved
>knows who is getting the real drug and who is getting a placebo.  So once
>the testing conditions became known, we started seeing killer books, odd
>behavior (running out of time if first non-book move was bad, so the game
>would be aborted) and other such things.  None of which was caused by the
>SSDF... but rather by the programmers themselves...
>
>We've seen cooked test suites, cooked book lines, and a host of such things,
>so *nothing* should be a big surprise any more...

Cooked books are ok, after all humans do *exactly* the same thing and we don't
object to that. Any program worth its salt should adapt quickly to the cooks and
stop playing into them. So at least in a long enough match the cooks will even
out.




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