Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 06:47:38 10/14/03
Go up one level in this thread
On October 13, 2003 at 14:08:51, Christophe Theron wrote:
>On October 13, 2003 at 08:31:04, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>
>>On October 13, 2003 at 08:16:20, Djordje Vidanovic wrote:
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>while preparing the opening book for Ruffian I decided to use a very good
>>>positional program for Ruffe's sparring partner. I decided on Diep due to its
>>>impressive positional play. Diep also has an interesting and unorthodox opening
>>>book with lots of lines that are worth analysing. No small wonder, the book's
>>>creator is a super strong Fide Master, the author of Diep: Vincent Diepeveen.
>>>
>>>Be it as it may, I matched Ruffian with only a skeleton of the book to be
>>>(meagre 1538 positions for starters) and pitted the positional monster against
>>>the fast searcher. The result was a little disappointing and I must say that I
>>>did not learn much from the match. Of course, bear in mind that these were only
>>>G/5 games, but still...
>>>
>>>Diep had its own rather well researched book, with many home cooked tricks and
>>>traps, while Ruffian was equipped with a wee book that is to grow yet. Diep had
>>>the advantage of a Barton 2800+ while Ruffian played on my old NetVista PIII-933
>>>computer.
>>>
>>>End result: Ruffian 86%, Diep 14%, or 48-8!! My question is: could the
>>>reigning leader of the SSDF beat Diep more convincingly than Ruffian?
>>
>>Two things come to mind:
>>
>>1. I didn't look at all the games, but it looks like Diep opened every game 1.
>>Nh3??
>>
>>2. Diep is more designed for longer time controls. I remember Vincent
>>complaining last CCT about how 60 10 was too short ;)
>
>
>
>TMUEAGAB (The Most Used Excuse After Getting A Beating, tm)
>
>I do not know if the setup of this match is correct and if Diep is really so
>weak, but I know that asking for longer time controls is just a way to spread
>fog.
>
>If a chess program really needs longer time controls to start playing decently,
>then there is something inherently wrong in its design.
>
>In other words, it sucks.
>
>I'm not saying that Diep sucks. Maybe the match setup was not fair for it.
>
>I'm saying that if a program gets such a beating at blitz it does not smell good
>anyway for a longer time controls match.
Some examples:
program A evaluates forks. Program B does not. Which will do better at
very shallow/fast searches? Program A will avoid forks while program B will
walk into them. As the time stretches out, program A's advantage will
shrink. I saw this happen in the 1970's.
Program A does a parallel search. That _clearly_ gets better as depth
increases (not without bound, but the difference between a parallel 3 ply
search and a parallel 10 ply search is huge.) Program A might get killed at
very shallow searches because of that performance problem.
King safety is another issue. A program that does this better will perform
better at fast time controls. At longer time controls a good search can
compensate somewhat for king safety.
I've previously explained a similar issue that almost cost me the 1986 WCCC
title, because I tuned on a slow machine but ran on a way faster machine. The
normal version lost way more games to a micro on very slow hardware, but the
"new and improved version" won nearly all from the micro. But put the new and
improved on the Cray and it played so incredibly passively that it simply did
poorly, period.
It isn't hard to tune for a specific depth and use eval to fill in holes that
the tactical search can't handle. That program will out-play the same program
without that specific eval term, until the depth is great enough that the search
compensates.
>
>That's incredible. I hear the same excuse ("it will perform better at longer
>time controls") since the days of the 386. Now that our computers are several
>hundred times faster, the same excuse is still used. It does not make any sense.
>
>
>
> Christophe
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