Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 07:34:55 09/08/98
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On September 08, 1998 at 07:31:12, odell hall wrote:
>Could someone give me a technical reason why Chess genius plays so much better
>on 486 machines than all the other programs. I have been pleasantly surprised by
>results against others programs running on much faster hardware (pent pro 200).
>These results have been so surprising that I have decided not to upgrade to a
>pent. Among the victims of genius 5 on 486, is crafty 15.8 running on mmx233,
>Rebel 9 (pent pro 200) and CM555 (pent mmx233) all the games were played at game
>in 30. I realize that statistically i am suppose to win some of the games, but i
>have been winning almost half!!, against much faster machines. However when i
>play my rebel 9 on the 486 it never wins, but draws often.
Genius is known to have a very good search algorithm, well fitted to slow
computers. In the last decade, Lang's programs were hard to beat because
computers were much slower.
It seems that today this algorithm has lost its huge superiority. Genius is able
to find very quickly long tactical tricks. Other programs take often a little
bit longer. But given a fast computer and time controls longer than blitz, other
programs generally won't miss those tactical issues.
This is not to say Genius algorithm sucks. I believe it is still superior, and I
would have been proud to write it myself. But other issues (long term positional
understanding for example) seems to be the real point nowadays, and maybe Genius
is not the best in this regard.
Anyway, your Genius would be much stronger if you had a Pentium, there is no
possible doubt here.
Christophe
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