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Subject: Re: Handicap methods for engines

Author: Stan Arts

Date: 09:11:30 01/01/04

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Hello

You could give my program Neurosis a try, it has a few options to make it
play weaker.
For instance, it has an option to simulate human time-use to some extent.
Then it won't move instantanious when moving out of book or with one
legal move or finding an easy mate and such, and it'll vary it's time-use
more. (with the human option per move it also chooses to use a random 75%
to 125% of the time it would like to use normally.)
To make it play weaker it has a speed option to limit the calculating
speed. There are 3 settings. Normal setting is full speed, but you can
limit it to (aprox) 5000 nodes/sec and 500 nodes/sec, and that's not
computer dependant, unless somehow it cant reach those speeds.
Then there is the speculative option that blows up most of the positional
evaluation values compared to the material values to have it start to
sacrifice and play weird and risky, but hopefully interesting. Well but
it's not "sound" at all so it's weaker then, but hopefully fun to play
against yourself. (If you are below 2000-2200 or so anyway)
Hmm well for instance then it will give up a pawn in the opening to get
better development or try to get passed pawns or worsen your king-safety
really desperate and often sacrifice pieces or pawns to do so, and then
it's up to you to stop it..

Greetings, and best wishes for the new year
Stan


On January 01, 2004 at 08:50:13, Robert Pawlak wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I recently got a new notebook that I am using for play against the computer (new
>p4). Only, I find that many of the handicapping tricks that I used with my old
>pentium do not dumb down the engines sufficiently on my hardware. For instance,
>shutting permanent brain off, or limiting hash table sizes (also, it seems like
>many engines today assume the existence of hash) used to work pretty well for
>me.
>
>So the quesiton is this. Are there any engines (winboard or UCI) that have
>options for dumbing down the engine a bit? I don't want to limit ply depth (too
>unrealistic in terms of time usage and endgame play). I've used the -e option in
>phalanx, and the strength option in Delfi to good effect, but I would like to
>know if there are any other engines with similar features.
>
>I don't want to spot the engine pieces, or use different time controls either.
>And I've tried the strength option in arena, and I find the time usage to be too
>unrealistic.
>
>Thanks much,
>Bob



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