Author: Steve Coladonato
Date: 23:46:41 09/18/02
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On September 18, 2002 at 10:26:50, Jayakumar Ramanathan wrote: >Hi, > >I use computers primarily to analyse my own games and help me find my mistakes. >The free engines that I use for this purpose are Crafty and Yace (run off of >SCID). > >My main question is how commercial engines (like Fritz) compare with >free engines. What are the precise differences in the programs and am I as a >master-want-to-be player going to even notice them? What is it in the Fritz >program that makes it about 200 rating points better than top free programs? > >My second question is if there are resources on the web on how a developing >player can use chess engines as an "in-house master"? I have found programs very >useful in finding tactics that have a definite conclusion. However, there have >also been situations where in-correct evaluations have been given based on a 14 >ply variation that has a forced mate at the end position. It is very difficult >to know when to trust computer analysis. How does an amatuer use a chess engine >for his/her improvement? > >Thanks >J.R. J.R., I do exactly the same thing you are doing and am using the same tools, Crafty, Yace and SCID. I used to use Shredder and Fritz but no longer do because I am running on Linux. Anyway, most of the commercial programs do a backward analysis meaning they start at the last move and work back towards the beginning. Crafty does forward analysis. Yace doesn't analyze a complete game, only in the SCID interface. The SCID interface causes the Xboard engines to do a forward analysis but I'm not sure what happens internally with the engine. I believe SCID calls the engine with each new position so I'm not sure whether the engine can take advantage of hash or not. From what I understand, forward analysis gives a more consistent analysis but not necessarily better than backward analysis. Backward analysis may not be as consistent as forward analysis but I think it gives a better analysis (my opinion only). The "in-correct" analysis you refer to I also think is a by-product of forward analysis as I have seen similar results. I also feel, as an amateur chess player, that any of the top rated engines will give a better analysis of a position than I can. However, at the end of the line the engine is suggesting, if things don't look right, I usually use interactive analysis to see if the line is correct or somewhere along the line the engine has started going down the wrong path. SCID allows you to do this as do all or most of the commercial engines. Just turn the SCID analysis engine on, make the moves along the variation in question and watch the score. Steve
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