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Subject: Re: Inflationary Effects?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 13:29:54 07/14/03

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On July 14, 2003 at 14:27:12, Uri Blass wrote:

>On July 14, 2003 at 13:38:30, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On July 14, 2003 at 03:27:27, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>On July 14, 2003 at 00:00:53, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On July 13, 2003 at 15:03:38, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On July 13, 2003 at 12:42:19, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I (and many others) believe that the Elo system works well for players
>>>>>>that are pretty close in rating.  It seems to work less well (in the case
>>>>>>of computers) for players that are significantly separated in ratings.
>>>>>
>>>>>I agree mostly, not sure why it should be different for computers though.
>>>>
>>>>I'm not either.  But if you watch a 2000 computer play a 2600 computer, it
>>>>_seems_ to me that the 2000 computer wins more games than it should.  Or at
>>>>least draws more than it should.  I certainly can't prove this however, but
>>>>experience seems to (at least in my case) support this conclusion.
>>>
>>>What experience?
>>
>>On servers.
>>
>>At a couple of dozen ACM and WCCC and WMCCC events.
>>
>>on matches played here locally during testing.
>>
>>Etc.
>>
>>>
>>>If you use games on chess servers then it is possible that the 2000 computer
>>>simply updated the software but the result are still not written in the rating
>>>list so this is different experience than ssdf.
>>>
>>>If you are talking about static programs than based on my memory there was a
>>>version of cray blitz that beated Genius1 in every game.
>>
>>With a big hardware advantage.  But It didn't win every game even though
>>it certainly should have.  I don't remember the specifics now, but I played
>>something like 20 games and hit two or three draws.  That was suggesting
>>a difference of 400+ rating points.  The real difference was far greater.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>Cray blitz had a big hardware difference but I do not think that the difference
>>>was more than 600 elo.
>>
>>At that point in time, we were talking about 500K nodes per second for
>>Cray Blitz vs genius on a 486/33, if I recall the hardware.  The difference
>>was probably way more than 600 elo, based on human vs computer games against
>>both.
>
>It is possible that Genius has some weakness that humans could take advantage of
>it.
>
>Based on the ssdf rating list we have difference of less than 500 elo between
>Crafty(A1200) and Genius1(486/33 mhz).
>
>Crafty 18.12/CB 256MB  Athlon 1200 MHz  2614
>Chess Genius 1.0  486/33 MHz            2140
>
>The difference is less than 500 ssdf elo and 500K nodes per second for cray
>blitz suggest that it was not better than Crafty on A1200 in the games that you
>played.
>
>I remember that latest Cray blitz could search 7M nodes per second but I
>understood also that you limited Cray blitz
>in the games against Genius1 so 500K nodes per second seems logical.
>
>Uri


No.  Cray Blitz could hit 7M on a T90, but we didn't have that hardware back
then.  When I played genius I used a plain Cray ymp-type machine using only
one processor.  I suspect we were searching around 20-25K nodes per second
max.  However, Cray Blitz knew more about some things than Crafty knows
today, particularly king safety.  And, in fact, that is how Cray Blitz
smashed genius badly.

Chris Whittington saw the first game I posted (I did not name the opponent)
and he immediately figured it out because of the king-side attack CB launched
to crush the early genius program.

I think Hsu had the same sort of experience when he played the commercials
with a crippled DB chip. He specifically mentioned king-safety as a big hole.
For early Genius programs it certainly was.  Genius was way good tactically,
but only when it could follow tactical lines.  Early in the attacks, it would
be oblivious to what was going on, until suddenly it saw the roof crashing
in.

That was how I beat it pretty easily as a human, in fact.  There were just
some openings it could not cope with.  The stonewall as black was one good one,
but there were others.  The King's gambit was another good choice.

That goes way back in time, to way before micro programs knew much about
endings, where Cray Blitz already had passed pawn code, outside passed pawn
code, pawn majority code, distant majority code, etc.  The micros were just
too slow to do all that _and_ maintain reasonable tactical acuity, although
genius was clearly the best tactical program (for micros) of the era.



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