Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 10:32:00 02/02/04
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On February 01, 2004 at 02:39:25, George Sobala wrote: >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. And yet . . . It may be possible to optimize the design of a chess engine for speed chess. Right? Bob D.
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