Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 13:04:54 10/13/03
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On October 13, 2003 at 14:26:23, Anthony Cozzie wrote: >I think it is definitely possible to tune a program for longer time controls: >fewer extensions and a larger eval. OTOH, I don't think we're talking hundreds >of elo points. Maybe 50. (relative performace at short and long time controls) As the time control approaches infinity, the strength difference between two engines becomes zero, because both engines would solve the game and play perfectly (theoretically, of course). I think this is why people claim that their engine plays better at longer time controls. The weaknesses in the weaker engine simply masked. I believe that you can find out which engine is better by playing many short games as opposed to fewer longer games. As you get into very short games (1/0), the relative importance of various strengths and weaknesses becomes skewed. For instance, poor time management can be fatal in 1/0 games, while it will only have a slight affect on the results of games at longer time controls. Different time controls can help you find bugs or weaknesses of different magnitude. For instance, in a 1/0 game, if you have a big weakness, it will be exposed by an engine that is more solid all around. That weakness could be time management or king safety or whatever. The weaker engine will not see what is coming in the shallower depth allowed in a 1/0 game, while the stronger engine will pick up on that weakness sooner. This is simple to see if you play 1/0 games between two engines. I played Ruffian vs. Crafty in a 1/0 match, and in the majority of games, Ruffian's score would jump up, and Crafty's score would do the same within 2-4 moves usually. That would make it pretty easy to pinpoint exactly where a potential weakness existed in Crafty, or any engine that was tested in this manner. I think that you need to test at several time controls however. 1/0 games will show you weaknesses, but the matches also seem to be pretty one sided in favor of the superior engine. This could make testing whether or not a change is indeed an improvement difficult. For instance, you might fix your poor time management and king safety, but your engine might still get the pulp beat out of it because of some other weakness. 1/0 games pretty much expose any weakness that exists, from my experience. So to test one change, longer games (longer than 1/0) could prove more useful. Different time controls will show you different things. However, really long time controls show you less and less as the time controls get longer, so there is some point at which there is no point in playing longer games. But anyway, I agree with Christophe that being better at longer time controls isn't exactly a good thing. It only means that the longer time controls hide the weaknesses of the engine, which does nothing to help you improve your engine, and if anything it probably hinders your ability to do so. Also note that this is really only applicable in regard to computer vs. computer games. Computer vs. human at long time controls is pretty interesting IMO. Especially correspondance time controls.
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