Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 07:26:08 09/02/05
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On September 01, 2005 at 20:22:21, Darrel Briley wrote: >On September 01, 2005 at 12:40:50, Stephen Ham wrote: > >>On September 01, 2005 at 11:20:51, Greg Simpson wrote: >> >>>The source is available for both, they are not entirely the same. >>> >>>I tried to see whether Toga 1.0beta2 was better head to head against Fruit 2.1 >>>in two minute/40 games, but after hundreds of games I couldn't reach a reliable >>>conclusion. Toga II 1.0 quickly showed itself to be better. >>> >>>Of course, the unreleased version of Fruit could well be better still. >> >>Dear Gentlemen, >> >>As a reader who's ignorant regarding chess programming, I was shocked and amazed >>that these amateur programs, Fruit and Toga can be the equals, if not superiors >>to Shredder 9, a commercial program that dominates all other commercials. >> >>But I've downloaded both Fruit 2.1, and subsequently Toga II, and was astounded >>by the results. >> >>I began by creating a double round-robin tournament with extremely long time >>controls (e.g. 6-hours/40-moves, 2-hours for the next time control, and then >>1-hour to finish) on a very fast AMD computer with 708 MB's of RAM. It consisted >>of Shredder 9, Junior 9, Hiarcs 9 and Fruit 2.1. My Fruit didn't have an opening >>book, so I gave it one that I created to test my correspondence chess opening >>ideas/novelties (lots of Dragons and Gruenfelds for Black, and my 1 d4 opening >>lines for White). >> >>The result was a clear win for Fruit, followed by Shredder, then Junior, and >>finally Hiarcs. I noticed that Fruit, while very strong, doesn't play sharply >>and that my opening book may not have been an ideal match for it. So I gave it >>the Nimzo 7.32 opening book for the next tourney. >> >>By this time, I'd downloaded Toga II and gave it my correspondence chess book. >>My next tourney was another double round-robin with classic FIDE time controls >>and the order of the finish was: Shredder, Toga, Junior, Fruit, and Hiarcs >>(scoring only 1.5!). >> >>I still see this as a great result for Fruit and Toga. But, I think that Fruit's >>use of the older Nimzo book may not have been ideal, since it didn't like many >>of the openings it got. So I "upgraded" to a modified Fritz 7 book (modified >>with data from recent opening theory and corrections of some book errors). I >>felt this book was solid enough to match Fruit's sold style. So in my last >>double round-robin tourney at standard time controls, the result was: Shredder, >>Fruit and Toga just a 1/2-point behind, Junior, and Hiarcs. >> >>Some observations from the above minimal data: >>1) Fruit showed great strength in the endgames. >> >>2) It also has a realistic evaluation function that's much superior to >>Shredder's. While it doesn't generally engage in aggressive play like Junior or >>Shredder (Toga seemed sharp too), it's not tactically weak at all. >> >>3) Toga seemed more variable in performance, while Fruit was universally >>steady/solid. It's my perception, based upon too little data, that Toga is a >>fine tactician but seems a little weaker in the endgame than Fruit (again based >>upon just these games). >> >>4) Hiarcs is a great program, but it was hurt by some awful stuff in its opening >>book. I've been gradually improving its book lines as I come across faulty >>lines. But clearly there's much more work to do. Hiarcs performs much better >>when I give it my modified Fritz 7 book. But I'll never get the Hiarcs book >>fixed unless I play more with it. Hiarcs was thus hurt by beginning games >>against superior engines, at long time-controls, from generally poor starting >>positions after its book ended. For the record, the bad Hiarcs book actually >>seems to help Hiarcs in speed games though, since Hiarcs scores very well (often >>coming in first) in my few short time-control tourneys. I've yet to test Fruit >>and Toga at fast time controls, since I'm really not interested in these >>results. >> >>I've subsequently tried using Fruit to test my opening novelties, but it doesn't >>perform the "Deep Position Analysis" properly. For example, if it's White's turn >>to move after 15-moves, it begins its search by skipping White's move and then >>looks only at the position as if Black were to move. It also fails to display >>the options other than the PV. >> >>Anyway, I'll test further. But I'm impressed. So while I see no dominance over >>Shredder's results in my tests, it's indeed possible that Toga and Fruit are >>superior to Shredder at long time controls. >> >>Again, these are just the observations of a computer dummy who knows a thing or >>two about chess in general, based upon too few games at long time controls. >> >>All the best, >> >>Steve > >Steve, > >Thanks for your report; more information is always good. By the way, you >wouldn't be willing to post these LTC games would you....? > > Hopeful Regards, > DB Hello Darrel, I suppose that I could. As I stated above, I'm a computer dummy, so somebody will needed to show me the steps needed to do this. Also, the computer that I used (I have 2) isn't connected to the internet. All the best, Steve
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