Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 20:37:39 01/27/99
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On January 27, 1999 at 18:07:40, Robin Smith wrote:
>Has anyone compared the "nodes per second" search rate for the various chess
>programs out there? The reason I am curious is it seems to me that for equaly
>rated programs, "fast searchers" might excell at speed chess and/or tactical
>positions, while perhaps "slow searchers" will perform better at very long time
>controls and/or more strategic positions. Has anyone made this comparison and
>are my assumtions reasonable?
From my experiences (I have written both very fast and very slow searchers),
fast searchers are unbeatable at very very very fast time controls. I mean when
the fast one can only compute 3 plies ahead, and the slow one only 1 or 2 plies.
This could have make them unbeatable in the early days of computer chess, but
nowadays this advantage has vanished.
So on modern computers, you cannot say that fast searchers will be better at
fast time controls or at tactics.
It is possible to write a good tactician and slow searcher. It is possible for a
fast searcher to be good at positional chess.
The problem is: how much of relevant information your search extracts, and you
can do it by extracting a lot from each node (and being slow) or extracting less
but scan more nodes (at a higher speed).
So far, nobody knows which approach will win: quality or quantity?
It may turn in the end that both are equivalent in some sense...
Christophe
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