Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: How do I improve test suites results?

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 02:33:13 03/16/03

Go up one level in this thread


On March 16, 2003 at 04:11:24, Albert Bertilsson wrote:

>Hi!
>
>First of all, the important question:
>Is it a good way to improve my engine, by running test-suites and try to improve
>the results? Do test-suites measure engine strength or engine bugs?
>
>If engine bugs are found with test-suites how do I know if the engine fails to
>find the solution because of a bug or because of lack of chess knowledge?

chess knowledge is not important for most of the test position.
If your engine can solve only 190 positions in WAC it must have bugs.

I suggest that you look at the first positions when other engines solve in less
than 0.1 seconds and you fail to solve in 5 seconds.

I guess that analyzing the reason that your engine failed may be productive.
The solution is simply too simple for humans not to understand it.


>
>If the engine is given a very long amount of time on each position (like two
>hours each) should it solve nearly all positions then (if we assume it is bug
>free)?

Yes
Espacailly in WAC that is a very easy test suite.

There are only a very small number of positions when the solution is not pure
tactics(probably less than 10 positions).
>
>I tried WacNew with Sharper 0.03 and was very dissapointed, it solved only 190
>positions with 5 sec per position on my XP 1800+, as this seem to be very bad
>compared to other engines I really want to improve this score.

I suggest that you start by looking for positions that you did not solve.

check extensions are important to solve test suites fast but if you solve only
190/300 in WAC then it seems that you have a bigger problem that you need to
solve first because I believe that even without extensions engines should solve
more than 190/300 in WAC.

Can you post the first numbers of the positions that you did not solve?

position number 2 is hard and movei also cannot solve it in few seconds so it
may be interested if you post the first 10 positions that you do not solve
without including position number 2.

Uri



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.