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Subject: Re: looking for difficult test suites in PGN format

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 10:57:57 10/27/05

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On October 27, 2005 at 10:44:17, David Dahlem wrote:

>On October 27, 2005 at 09:29:39, Jon Dart wrote:
>
>>On October 27, 2005 at 05:03:18, Thorsten Czub wrote:
>>
>>>the program i want to test has no EPD import but maybe it works
>>>with FEN in PGN ??
>>
>>Try Arena (http://www.playwitharena.com) - it can read EPD
>>and drive the engine to analyze it.
>>
>>>
>>>has anyone tough positions or knows how to get them into the prgram without
>>>manually set up everything ?
>>
>>The positions I use are available at
>>http://www.arasanchess.org/tests.zip
>>
>>--Jon
>
>Is there a test suite that will give an accurate and reliable estimate of engine
>strength or improvement? My results on test suites has been very disappointing.
>The version that scores best on suites always plays worse in actual games. :-)

Test suites do not measure engine strength.  They measure tactical ability.
Hence, there is no sure correlation between test suite solving and game play.

I would put it this way:
Good tactical ability is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for chess
engine excellence.

Test suites are good for at least two important things:
1.  Finding holes or errors in your evaluation
2.  Ensuring that you have not introduced a serious bug.

The only way to find out if the program plays stronger is to play lots and lots
of games against a diverse crowd of opponents.



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