Author: George Sobala
Date: 23:39:25 01/31/04
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On January 30, 2004 at 22:08:18, James T. Walker wrote: >On January 30, 2004 at 12:01:23, George Sobala wrote: > >>My conclusion is pretty much like yours - when two engines are even only >>approximately of similar strength, the randomness of the play caused by the very >>short time control is far greater than the true difference in strengths. You can >>measure out to 1000000 games, and all you do is measure the randomness of blitz >>play. >> >>Far better to play fewer but longer games. > >If you flip a coin 200 times and get heads 101 times and tails 99 times would >you conclude that it was because you didn't flip the coin high enough into the >air? In my opinion your conclusion about randomness caused by short time >controls is the same thing. Two programs of approximately equal strength will >naturally have very close results. I feel certain however if you run a million >games you will have a very good answer as to which program is stronger between >Fritz8/Shredder8. Programs today on modern hardware are looking ahead about 10 >ply minimum with extensions in some cases another 20/30 ply at blitz time >controls. I would not call this random play. Programs today play better chess >at 5/0 than 99% of human chess players playing at 40/2 hours. >By the way, in my blitz database, Shredder 8 is only 13 Elo ahead of Shredder >7.04 and 19 Elo ahead of Fritz 8. >Jim You are wrong because a chess game is not a coin flip. In a series of 3 minute blitz games, a fair proportion of the games are decided in a mad end-game time scramble where the engines are searching very few ply indeed. This is the "randomness" element that does _not_ reflect on the true strength of the engines.
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