Author: Moritz Berger
Date: 10:19:24 09/08/98
Go up one level in this thread
On September 08, 1998 at 12:24:07, Don Dailey wrote: >I think it is still fundamentally superior to the other programs. It >may not actually be the very strongest currently, but this may be because >Richard has not made any substantial effort to stay ahead and I also >don't think the book is engineered as well as the top contenders, which >could be a big part of the reason his program is not dominant right >at the moment. > >- Don I challenge your reasoning above because several facts seem to contradict your statement about the book being to blame at large for Genius not being "dominant": (1) #1 at the SSDF is still Fritz 5, which uses a GM database without *any* modifications or tuning (PowerBook). So your statement about "book is [not] engineered as well as the top contenders", given the lack of engineering in Fritz' case, seems funny to me. (2) Genius 3 had one of the best opening books of its time. Do you think that Richard Lang (or Ossi Weiner or whoever) replaced it with something inferior? Why should they do this? (3) Try it out yourself: Using the G3 or G5 or Genius tournament book (the infamous 1.c4-only book) doesn't have any measurable effect on results vs. other programs or humans (i.e. all books I mentioned fit Genius' style equally well). (4) Test suites don't have Genius at the top, in fact it fails in some positions that all other contemporary 2500+ SSDF programs solve in a couple of minutes. (5) "Dominant" means at the very least 50 ELO, more likely 100 ELO points stronger. Hiarcs 7, Rebel 10, Junior 5, Fritz 5 score (or will score with high probability) about 50-100 ELO better than Genius 5 at the SSDF (and probably anywhere else, for that matter). For Genius to become "dominant" at some other "moment" in time, it would need to gain a minimum of 150+ rating points with the next release, something which seems slightly unlikely given the historically small improvements e.g. from Genius 2 to Genius 5. Also, the reign of Genius already ended 5 years ago with the advent of Hiarcs 3 and Rebel 6. The era of dominance was most significant with dedicated Mephisto machines and maybe the very first Genius releases for the PC (1 and 2), but after that true improvements happened elsewhere, IMHO. Moritz
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.