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Subject: Re: Different Hydra personalities against Rybka

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 04:06:35 12/13/05

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On December 13, 2005 at 06:33:05, Kolss wrote:

>The same with Ikarus. I quite regularly produce versions which outscore the
>standard version by 30 or even 60 ELO points in direct matches by just doing
>some tweaking or adding or removing a term here or there. But in *most* cases,
>these versions do worse (often by about 50 ELO points!) against a standard set
>of different opponents.

You see this in *most* cases?  Strange.  I have *never* seen this happen.
Like everybody else, I have often experienced that a version which seems to
be much stronger in self-play matches is only a tiny bit stronger against
other engines, and also that there is no measurable difference at all.  I
have never seen the version which is stronger in self-play perform measurably
*worse* against other programs, however.

>Self-play can give you a hint that you screwed something up completely, but it
>is no serious way to measure progress / improvement.

For me, self-play is useful as a first, quick test.  Because my experience
is that self-play tends to exaggerate the difference between two program
versions, it enables me to detect tiny improvements more rapidly.  If the
results of my self-play matches are promising, I proceed to test against
other engines.

Tord



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