Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Test Set Results From Fritz7 With And Without Futility Pruning

Author: Eran

Date: 16:48:13 02/06/02



The interesting comparative results of the MATS test set (The MAstricht Test
Set) are shown below.

Fritz7 with futility pruning (selected):
Result 18 out of 24 = 75%  Average time = 18.05s / 163.09s

Fritz7 without futility pruning (deselected):
Result 19 out of 24 = 79%  Average time = 25.08s / 145.04s

Fritz7 with latest update (version 7.0.0.6 - January 22, 2002)
MATS test set contains 24 positions in total

For more information about MATS test set, please click below

http://www.cs.rulimburg.nl/~uiterwyk/icca/mats.htm .

Also, the test set in epd format can be downloaded from there.

I tried to compare how well Fritz7 played with and without futility pruning.
Please see the comments as follows below.

Firstly, based on the test Fritz7 without futility pruning seemed to solve more
positions than with futility pruning. The only game number 10 in the test set
was solved by Fritz7 without futility pruning only. The rest were the same but
with futility pruning Fritz7 searched a bit faster. That indicated that without
futility pruning Fritz7 seemed to play better in positional games. Obviously,
with futility pruning Fritz7 overlooked it because futility pruning was an
aggressive, faster and deeper search that might miss some good moves. Secondly,
Fritz7 without futility pruning seemed to search slower than with futility
pruning but overlooked less.

Conclusion: I believe that Fritz7 with futility pruning is better in
time-control games in tournament such as rapid chess, sudden death and any
tactical-oriented games. On the other hand, if you want to let Fritz7 analyze a
position or a game for a long time, futility pruning should be turned off since
time is not very important.

What is futility pruning?  According to the information from the Fritz7 online
help as follows below.

Futility pruning: This is an aggressive method of narrowing down the search. It
allows the program to go much deeper, but it also increases the possibility that
it will oversee something.

Selecting and deselecting Futility pruning feature is available inside the
Fritz7 engine parameters dialog box.

Eran




This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.