Author: Didzis Cirulis
Date: 03:47:56 12/04/98
Go up one level in this thread
On December 04, 1998 at 05:00:23, Kai Skibbe wrote:
>On December 04, 1998 at 03:02:50, Didzis Cirulis wrote:
>
>>On December 04, 1998 at 01:53:03, Kai Skibbe wrote:
>>
>>>On December 03, 1998 at 23:26:30, Vicente Fernández wrote:
>>>
>>>>On December 03, 1998 at 19:13:41, Micheal Cummings wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I get the impression that because CM6000 is very cheap to buy then people do not
>>>>>consider it to be very strong.
>>>>>
>>>>>Well with the amount of money that the Chessmaster programs pull in, I think
>>>>>that the guy who programs the kings engine would also be pulling in allot of
>>>>>money, and thus would have the resources to make such a strong engine even
>>>>>stronger.
>>>>>
>>>>>CM6000 is marketed for the mass public, and because it does not have an
>>>>>autoplayer and cannot play against other programs unsupervised, that alot of
>>>>>people dismiss CM6K and for that matter the versions before, because of the lack
>>>>>of results against other programs.
>>>>>
>>>>>And I have already started to see that CM6K has been pulling in some very good
>>>>>results in tournaments already, and all I hear, is "what a suprise". Anyone who
>>>>>has been using Chessmaster since CM5000, knows that it is very strong.
>>>>>
>>>>>Well I hope CM6K does beat the other programs if anyone out there will play it
>>>>>manually (too SSDF members), just to shut up people who keep making comments
>>>>>that this cheap software program, which sells more than any other chess program
>>>>>100 times over. Cannot be strong.
>>>>>
>>>>>And to Mindscape, put in a damn autoplayer so you can shut all these people up
>>>>>and kick their sorry butt.
>>>>
>>>>I have manually played 4 games between CM6000 an fritz 5.1, 60-60, on a k62-300
>>>>with 128 ram. Chessmaster 6000 leads 3 to 1, winning both games with black.
>>>>Using the thinking lines window I can see that chessmaster gets a more accurate
>>>>evaluation of the positions and, most important, "sees" drawbacks and mates
>>>>before Fritz 5 does. Although the number of games played manually doesn´t count
>>>>statistically, I can tell for sure that CM6000 is very, very strong, maybe the
>>>>strongest... who knows? And, I agree with Mr. Cummings: cheap is not weak, and,
>>>>surely, everybody would like to see an autoplayer on the new King version.
>>>
>>>Do you play the games on one computer ? In this case the match is unfair for the
>>>opponent of chessmaster, because cm6000 uses the processor even if you have
>>>played the match with permanent brain of.
>>>Conclusion : No matches with cm6000 on one computer !
>>>
>>>Best regards
>>>Kai
>>Wrong! Although you are right in regard that CM is a processor hog even with the
>>permanent brain off, one can still have a fair match between any two programs if
>>some testing and calculations are done before.
>
>I think it is not wrong ! I only said that you can not play fair matches with
>cm6000. Matches between Fritz5 and Rebel 10 for example are possible. Other
>programs that worked are Shredder and Junior.
>
>Or how do you configure the programs to do a fair match ?
>
>Kai
Ok, Kai :-) Let's go over it in couple of words:
So, What do we have - a single PC and any two programs. And we are mad with
desire to test the programs we have got as fair as possible. Right?
Step one: make sure both programs can be run with the permanent brain off. For
example, it is difficult for Nimzo 98 as there is no PB on/off option in this
program.
Step two: For dos programs make sure they get as much processor power as
possible when active and gets suspended when unactive. (See Christophe's
comments above.)
Step three: find out the Hash sizes your programs can afford. Example: On my 32
Mb RAM system, I usually give 8 Mb of hash to both programs to avoid any
swapping. This IS important, as swaping makes everything useless.
Step four: Imagine there is an amount of calculations that should be done by a
program, say, 1 milion positions. And now you should do some testing:
Situation (all numbers are given as an example only!):
1) get the time used by the program A when it runs alone: 100 seconds
2) same task, same program A, but program B is there
unactive in the background, and hogs some computing power: 140 seconds
3) get the time used by the program B when it runs alone: 120 seconds
4) same task, same program B, but program A is there
unactive in the background, and hogs some computing power: 125 seconds
So, in both situations it may happen that program runs slower if another one
sits there in the background.
Step five: Calculations!
Formula:
koeficient =(result with a "hog" in background)/ (result if alone)
For program A it makes: 140/100=1.4
For program B it makes: 125/120=1.042
Step six: Let's say we want to play at 30 minutes per game level. What do we do
now is the calculation of the times needed by both programs:
For program A: 30 minutes x 1.4 = 42 minutes
For program B: 30 minutes x 1.042 = 31.26 minutes or let's say 31 minute.
Final step: we give Program A the 42 minutes for the game, and 31 minute to
Program B, and :-)
Run all tests 3 times! Sometimes it is required to restart the program every
time to be sure we get the same situation again.
This is the way we can make a fair match even on a single PC where both programs
are busy stealing the computing power from each other :-)
There may be different practical applications of this. One program may have some
built-in test that is very convenient for this purpose, but another one may be
tested running a test position at a fixed depth. Or there may be programs where
you should disable Book, and run the initial position as a test position... Ask
me if any problems.
Didzis
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