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Subject: Re: Most brilliant novelty from cct7 Witchess-Arasan

Author: Peter Berger

Date: 14:43:32 02/15/05

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On February 15, 2005 at 15:57:20, Uri Blass wrote:

>I think that Crafty did the expected result in WCCC.

Actually you did predict it to the point before the tournament, so I agree with
you.

The influence of book is just *way* over-estimated by people who had a too low
expectation of Crafty's potential. There were some games where Crafty's book was
really fine, mainly against Shredder,Junior, Fritz and Sjeng . But it only got
1/4 out of them, which means this includes most points lost. And the book
variation chosen against SOS was bad, this one had been mostly untested due to
lack of time, and just used based on analysis that didn't turn out to be
relevant.

I was unhappy with openings against Falcon, Diep and IsiChess, and they clearly
left a lot to be desired. This time the net result was 3/3 though.

I think Crafty had really bad books in most past WCCs it played in - this time
it was quite OK, nothing more, nothing less.

I can add further evidence for my assessment : the blitz event where Crafty
finished 2nd, it played with a completely random ( and I mean it, because a
screwed up non-working 32-bit one was used) book.

I think people just tend to underestimate Crafty on strong hardware , especially
several well-known programmers. It was even seeded 8th (!) by ICGA officials
e.g., and this was not the least bit controversial with programmers present. The
major reason probably is that under conditions more often used in tests at home,
it can't compete with the top. I also think that it was indeed a very good and
well-tested version. Crafty's released versions always goes up and down a bit.

Peter



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