Author: Mike Byrne
Date: 08:17:59 01/04/04
Go up one level in this thread
On January 04, 2004 at 00:42:02, Christophe Theron wrote: >On January 03, 2004 at 20:53:39, Rick Rice wrote: > >>Person A posts a message saying Ruffian 2.0 is very dissapointing, with the >>results to back it up. This is followed by a second post which basically says >>that Ruffian 2.0 rocks with some results to back it up. Are these programs >>really so time and hardware sensitive, so as to show varying results on >>different CPUs/time controls? >> >>Ideal solution would be for SSDF to have one massive board with one CPU and >>memory for each program (equal CPU and mem for all the progs on its list) and >>some way to automate the play of these programs against each other..... on >>different time controls such as regular, blitz etc. Just wishful thinking for >>the future, but it would eliminate the multiple and varying results. >> >>Cheers, >>Rick > > > >Statistics are extremely important in chess, and in computer chess. > >Unfortunately, even after years of talks about the subject, almost nobody on >this message forum understands that you really need A LOT OF GAMES to start to >have an impression of a probability about which program is stronger. > >The variations you have noticed do not come from different setups. > >These variations are statistical variations. That means that most of the match >results posted here are statistically MEANINGLESS. > >People love to proudly post the result of the 20 games match they have run >overnight. They don't even care to know if that result has any meaning. Well in >most of the cases the result means nothing (just a waste of electric power) and >you should not care about it at all. > > > > Christophe I'm not disagreeing with you from a statiscal viewpoint - but human players play far fewwer games - and we are content to decide the World Championship on statistically meaningless number of game , or even for Graz 2003. It is what we have. I don't think people really play computer vs computer chess games overnight for statstical purposes - I think they do it for fun, and part of the fun is posting the results and saying "look at this , "xyx program just won my 2003 Holiday tournament " it's a game - just like fantasy football, baseball etc. Chessbase, Chessmaster and perhaps even Majestic Chess has recognised this "niche" for its entertainment value and that one of the reasons why the those companies do well. It's more than chess and it's more than just having the strongest engine , for the consumer it's also about having fun and running tournaments is fun (at least I think so!)
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