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Subject: Re: Engine testing: Who do you play?

Author: Stuart Cracraft

Date: 19:44:47 08/27/04

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On August 27, 2004 at 19:54:28, Dan Honeycutt wrote:

>Does anyone have an opinion if it is better for an engine to play itself or
>other engines when trying to determine if a change is an improvement?
>
>I had two versions of my engine, old and new, identical except for one
>difference (new did checks in 1st ply of qsearch, but my question is general).
>I played old and new in a tourney against themselves and 3 other engines, 1
>stronger, 1 weaker and 1 about equal.  After a week and a half and nearly 1000
>games I found new was better than old against all three of the other engines,
>but lost head-to-head against old.  This can't be; error margin I figure.  So I
>burned another week and a half of computer time and got the same result.  Does
>this make sense?  With results like this, how does one know if a change is any
>good?
>
>Any advice/opinions appreciated.
>Dan H.

Computer vs. computer and especially computer against a version of itself
is well-known for exaggerating the relative difference.

Why not setup your program for internet chess server chess and have it
play there?

Stuart



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