Author: Joachim Rang
Date: 11:58:22 07/20/04
Go up one level in this thread
On July 20, 2004 at 13:03:06, Robert Hyatt wrote: >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. Is there no way to implement different time management for ponder on and ponder off? regards Joachim
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