Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 15:34:40 01/08/04
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On January 08, 2004 at 17:16:17, Bob Durrett wrote: >HIARCS X plays as “sinferno” at ICC on an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ @ 2.5GHz computer. >It holds the "official" ICC Blitz Record at 3604 and has the fewest losses and >better overall records versus strong titled players than any other computer on >ICC. It has only lost five games to two titled players but has played a large >number of GMs, IMs and FMs. It is currently the top engine at ICC using >Standard time limits. > >Why is that? Why is it better than all the other chess engines no matter what >the hardware? Is SSDF missing something here? Is there a disconnect here? > >Bob D. Hi Bob, That's a great question, to which I'd like to learn the answer too. I don't know anything about the ICC; I've never been there. But a few nights ago I thought that it might be fun to have a 5' match (10-games) against Shredder 7.04. Although I'm bored stiff by 5' computer games, I saw value in this one since I'd completely overhauled Shredder's opening book to only play the lines that I play in Correspondence Chess. Ordinarily, at slow time controls, Shredder virtually ALWAYS wins. So I naturally feel smug about my opening book. ;-) Therefore I thought it would be fun to finally see what my book and Shredder would do to Hiarcs 9 at 5'. After all, Shredder 8 defeated the latest Fritz at Blitz in Graz. To my shock and horror, Hiarcs 9 won convincingly (I don't recall the score but it was probably +3). So I examined the games and saw that Hiarcs and it's goofy opening book actually played superior tactics than Shredder. So I repeated the experiment. This time the score was something like +2, favoring Hiarcs 9. Same story on game quality. So I prepared Shredder's opening book for some of the offbeat stuff that Hiarcs plays (Hiarcs repeats the same lines it has success with a great deal), and the next result over another 10-game match was 5-5. Conclusion: Hiarcs' 5' tactical skills seem superior to Shredder's. Also, while Hiarcs' opening book seems quirky (and often downright bad), Shredder seems to need more time to refute the stuff that Hiarcs plays. In my latest long time-control match and tournament, Shredder was dominant. If I get time, I'll try a long time-control match and switch opening books. I have a theory that Hiarcs 9 would perform better if it weren't handicapped by its opening book. Oddly enough, this quirky book just may be an asset at short time controls in that it often removes the other engine from its book, saving Hiarcs time on the clock. Clearly this isn't much of a factor at longer time-controls where quality of moves played prevails. Well, that's my 2-cents worth. All the best, Stephen
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