Author: Robin Smith
Date: 19:10:34 01/04/04
Go up one level in this thread
On January 04, 2004 at 09:44:39, Albert Silver wrote: >The interactive analysis mode in CA is completely under the user's control. >That's why it is referred to as interactive, so perhaps you are thinking of >something else. No I am not thinking of something else, and yes, CA does give you some nice controls for "interactive" analysis; but when I am talking about interactive analysis of positions I mean you are sitting in front of the monitor and controlling the analysis the whole time, not that you set some parameters and walk away. To me that is not really interactive any more than a pilot turning on an autopilot by plugging in some numbers, and then going to sleep, is "interactive". But even for this type of automated "interactive" analysis, the Fritz GUI's "deep position analysis" (the most similar thing to CA's interactive position analysis) has a nice feature too, which I keep mentioning: you can specify multiple strong engines to do the analysis, including Tiger, Shredder, Fritz, Hiarcs and Junior, all at one time. As with CA, Fritz also lets you set a bunch of parameters to control the search, although CA's are a little more flexible and interesting. But not enough to make up for the lack of engine support. And besides, for the _best_ interactive analysis you should be guiding it at every step, not setting it up and going to sleep, although admittedly most people don't have time for this. >>Sure. In many positions Shredder has an overly optimistic evaluation. >>_Extremely_ optimistic. Shredder will often show +3 pawns in drawn positions, >>where other engines show only a slight advantage. A +3 eval should = easy win, >>but in Shredder's case, much more so than with other programs, it often does >>not. > >Much more so than other programs? If it is really so much more wrong than other >programs, how do you account for its superior results? Yes, _much_ more so than other programs. Its superior results have nothing to do with the magnitude of the evaluations. If you take a program, any program, and modify it by multiplying all the evaluations by 10, it will look very weird to human eyes, and be very confusing to someone not expecting this, but the program will play exactly the same moves, since all the evaluations were scaled by the same amount. Shredder is fairly consistantly optimistic, which does not hurt play at all, but "looks" very odd to the analyst and can mislead you if you don't know about it. >>Tiger has evaluation discontinuities. It will show one evaluation consistently >>and for very long time periods and then when you play 2 plies of the PV the >>evaluation can suddenly jump, sometimes by a pawn or more. Very confusing for >>analysis purposes. > >I've seen this too on occasion, but more often with Fritz actually. Maybe this >was corrected with Fritz 8 though, which I don't own. It was present with Fritz >7. Yes Fritz has this a little too, many engines do, but I think Tigers is bigger. Fritz 5 used to be very bad, but I believe each new version of Fritz has gotten better. I haven't seen it in Fritz 8, although I haven't looked for it real hard either. >>Engine tournaments can be a very good analysis tool in some circumstances. I >>have writen a book on chess analysis that will soon be published by Gambit that >>will talk about this, amoung other things. I also have correspondence IM and SIM >>titles, a correspondence rating in the world top 100 (and soon will have a >>correspondence GM title), so your above statement is no longer true. > >I was referring to OTB IMs and GMs. I know two correspondence players here in >Rio, one who is also one of the top players in the world, and another who is an >SIM, but I admit to not being a big follower of the modality, mostly because I >think it has been spoiled by excessive use of engines. Yes, correspondence has been spoiled for many people by chess engines. Some people have stopped playing altogether because of it, while others have adapted. But I can assure you that at the top level there is much more to correspondence play than just plugging a position into a computer. I have run into many players rated around ~2300-2350 doing (I believe) this, but not any players rated ~2600. By the way, OTB GM John Nunn is one of the editors of my book, and he has not had any negative comments regarding my section on engine tournaments. I think many people, both OTB players and correspondence players, have been keeping their program use tricks secret. >>>Actually, CA has a LOT more to it than that over CB with all due respect. >> >>I agree. And with all due respect, CB also has a lot more over CA. > >Such as? I have already mentioned the two biggest ones: many strong engines supported and the ability (in Fritz) to run tournaments. For me these are the main ones, although I also think: 1) The CB GUI is, as you mention below, more attractive. This is not a small thing, the CA chess boards are not nearly as comfortable to look at for long periods of time. Of course if you set it up and walk away this doesn't matter so much. 2) The CB GUI is easier to learn. One example out of hundreds of easier to learn... cutting a position to the clipboard in CB it is just the windows standard, <ctrl> C, rather than the harder to remember <ctrl> \ of CA. 3) The CB GUI is easier to navigate your way around, probably related to the easier to learn part. Much of CA's "extra functionality" is fluff stuff I don't care about and that only makes the program harder to use. 4) I find that sometimes CA leaves engines running, even after you close the program, which then steals CPU time and memory resources until you notice. 5) If you do a search of a database of endgame positions, such as Comprehensive Chess Endings, looking for positions with a particular number of pieces, like 7-8, it will show zero games, even though there are many. and some other little things. Not a big deal. I like _both_ CB and CA. But I use CB more. >>They each >>have strong and weak points. You talk almost as though CA is better than CB in >>every way. This is silliness. > >Not every way. CB is more attractive, but it is less functional. I'd be curious >to know what aspects of its functionality you find to be superior. See above. >>Yes CA is better than CB here. But I think Bookup is even better than CA for >>this. > >I wouldn't know as I do not own BookUp. Could you tell me what aspects of >repertoire building you think are better? Bookup is a position database, instead of a games database, sort of like CA trees. But Bookup allows you to assign position evaluations, both numeric (such as 25 for 25 centipawns) and symbolic (such as +/=) and then you can backsolve these positions, somewhat like a program performing minimax, so that positions closer to the root have their evaluations determined by the later positions. Bookup also imports and exports EPD files correctly, including position assessments, and Bookup makes it very easy to find moves that can transpose from one branch of the tree into a different branch of the tree. Bookup also shows you at a glance how many _positions_ result from a particular move choice, so you have a better idea how big each branch is. Bookup is over priced for what it does compared to CA (costs more, at least for Bookup "professional" and does less), and I would never recommend Bookup as the sole program people use, but if you are into studying opening repertoirs then Bookup is pretty cool. Bookup can also help you study certain endgames that involve a number of transpositions. Robin
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