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Subject: Re: CEGT or how many games are needed?

Author: Volker Böhm

Date: 08:02:03 03/30/05

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On March 30, 2005 at 08:50:45, Heinz van Kempen wrote:

>Hi all  :) ,
>
>we updated our CEGT websites again and now have 859 games for most engines. The
>rating list is here:
>
>http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/cegt.html
>
>The list itself is not astonishing, but when one compares total results from
>CEGT 1 with 510 games for each engine with those of CEGT 2 with 349 games for
>each engine, testers will have to confess that it is practically impossible to
>measure the strength of engines with less than 1000 games and we should stop to
>draw conclusions from shorter tournaments. Just compare Junior and Fritz or
>Gandalf in CEGT 1 and 2.
>
>This is independent of time control, although I hoped it would be less extreme
>with our longer time control. It is also independent of using Nunn, Noomen or
>general books, as we now used almost all Nunn positions to cover the most
>important openings and Charles with general books also has the same differences.
>
>We will push the CEGT tournaments to more than 1000 games for each engine to
>reduce the error bars.
>
>http://www.chessfighters.de/cegt/
>http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/
>
>Please also read about AEGT starting these days.
>
>Best Regards
>Heinz

Hi Heinz,

for Spike we play about 1000 Games to decide for a change. The 1000 Game are
played versus 10 different opponents with 50 standard openings (thus playing
without book). We´ve seen that time-control, opponents does matter. Even then
10-20 elo can be hazardous.

It is especially hard to compare engines if they only plays against each other
with opening books switched on. I suggest to look at games to see if two engine
often played the same game until a position that is a clear loss/win for one
side (The book builder of spike is well suited to do that :-). Which value has a
statistic of 1000 games with only 100 different games?

With a larger amount of opponents you can ignore this effect.

Greetings Volker



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