Author: Peter Fendrich
Date: 07:13:06 10/14/03
Go up one level in this thread
On October 14, 2003 at 09:47:38, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>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.
>
Ahh!
So you are defending Diep and Vincents view now! :-)
/Peter
>
>
>>
>>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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