Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:03:06 07/20/04
Go up one level in this thread
On July 20, 2004 at 04:27:26, Peter Berger wrote: >On July 20, 2004 at 04:19:14, Kurt Utzinger wrote: > >> Hi Graham >> Is this a further proof that there is a significant >> difference in playing strength of Crafty between >> ponder=on/ponder=off. Should this indeed be the case >> it would perhaps be better to cancel Crafty 19.15 SE >> in our coming AT 2004 tournament. I do not like to >> produce bad results for an engine when it is known >> that our playing conditions (ponder=off) do handicap >> Crafty. >> Kurt [http://www.utzingerk.com] > >Volker Pittlik did an experiment some time ago: >http://www.pittlik.de/winboard/ponder.html > >I don't know a good reason why Crafty should be more handicapped by ponder=off >than other engines. If I were you I'd just start with the tournament - there >will always be other possible setups that some will prefer. There are two parts to time controls. 1. time per move. If I know I am pondering, I also know I will save some time on ponder "hits". Rather than letting this time accumulate and drive up the average time per move later in the game, when it might well already be decided, I can use some of this time _before_ I actually accumulate it, where important strategic/tactical decisions are being made. With ponder=off, I can't do that and just have to use a static time per move, period. 2. Crafty handles certail fail-high/fail-low conditions differently depending on whether it is "ahead" or "behind" on time. With no pondering, it will _never_ be "ahead" on time and will not spend extra time at positions where it seems to be important to do so. With pondering on, it will accumulate extra time with pondering hits, and then it can use this extra time when it thinks it is necessary. It can play with pondering off. It will play _better_ with pondering on. How other programs deal with this is totally unknown, so there is no way to say that ponder=off hurts crafty more or less than it does other programs. All I can say with 100% certainty is that ponder=off _does_ hurt Crafty overall. And sometimes that can be significant.
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