Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Experiment #6 - 2nd match finished !

Author: Roy Eassa

Date: 08:28:30 10/15/03

Go up one level in this thread


On October 14, 2003 at 17:04:04, martin fierz wrote:

>On October 14, 2003 at 13:08:31, Roy Eassa wrote:
>
>>On October 14, 2003 at 06:46:39, martin fierz wrote:
>>
>>>nice tests! shredder vs junior and CT15 vs rebel 12 beta at least show trends of
>>>favoring one program at short and another program at long time control.
>>>
>>
>>
>>Martin, I always have great respect for your postings but in this instance I
>>must differ with your conclusion.  The same engine won in every match in each
>>set.  The margins of victory decreased in 7 of the 9 cases where the time
>>control was increased (i.e., almost 78% of the time).
>>
>>To me, this supports the idea that, IN GENERAL, the better engine will win by
>>smaller and smaller margins as the time control increases -- leading to the
>>possible conclusion that more games at faster time controls is a very efficient
>>way to determine which of two engines is better (but not by how much).
>>
>>Russell Reagan made this (IMHO excellent) post recently, which the new results
>>seem to support:
>>
>>http://www.talkchess.com/forums/1/message.html?320960
>
>i guess it's good that we don't agree all of the time :-)
>yes, uri has also already pointed out that an alternative hypothesis to explain
>the data is that as time controls get longer, results come closer to a drawn
>match.
>so we have 3 different assumptions:
>1) longer time controls favor some engines compared to others
>2) longer time controls reduce differences between engines
>3) longer time controls make no difference
>
>and perhaps we can construct some more. while gerhards data is great i don't
>think it allows any conclusion about the above possibilites. i hope he continues
>with his experiments.
>
>i tend to believe #1 because i have seen this behavior in my checkers engine in
>two different experiments. first, when comparing it to another engine, where at
>fast time controls they are equivalent, but at long time controls mine wins
>bigtime. second, because i once made a test between a dumb and a smart version
>of my checkers program, with the dumb version having an advantage of 4 (IIRC)
>ply search depth over the smart one. at low search depths (i.e. short time
>controls) the dumb version would beat the smart version. at high search depths
>it was the other way round. i attribute this to the difference between strategy
>and tactics: the smart version would play the moves that seemed right, but at
>low search depth it would fall for traps all the time. at higher search depth
>that somehow was not the case.
>
>i *believe* this, i'm not saying it's true. the other 2 hypotheses are certainly
>worth checking too!
>
>cheers
>  martin
>
>PS re russel's post - i just disagree. playing blitz games is not a good idea to
>test engine strength IMO...


Good answer.  At least we can all agree that we're dealing in theories and that
our beliefs may be disproven.  That's a lot compared to most Internet
discussions (including some I have only recently abandoned).



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.