Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 12:48:35 07/06/99
Go up one level in this thread
On July 06, 1999 at 13:17:48, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>On July 04, 1999 at 17:29:35, blass uri wrote:
>
>>
>>On July 04, 1999 at 17:12:02, Bo Persson wrote:
>>
>><snipped>
>>>Not quite.
>>>
>>>If you run under Windows, a program can behave badly and be a CPU hog. It can do
>>>a number of "tricks", like increasing its own priority, to get more CPU time
>>>from the system.
>>>
>>>This will be unfair to "the nice guy" who's program runs "properly" - share and
>>>share alike.
>>
>>I do not suggest thinking and pondering at the same time.
>>The only reason that the game is going to be twice longer is that instead of
>>thinking and pondering at the same time I suggest to do it not at the same time
>>so instead thinking and pondering for 2 minutes on the same time I need 4
>>minutes(2 for one engine to think and 2 for the second engine to ponder without
>>knowing the move of the first engine)
>>
>>Uri
>
>I've explained this several times. "ponder=off" (crafty terminology) is _not_
>the way to play engine vs engine games. I do _all_ of my testing with
>ponder=on, and only use ponder=off for test suites and debugging. My time
>allocation code is tuned to run with ponder=on. Running with it off will
>most definitely cause some timing difficulties that are not normally seen.
>
>I'd bet that if you ask, most programmers test with ponder=on and feel very
>comfortable with their code. But if you ask them to play a serious tournament
>with ponder=off, I'd bet you would see a _lot_ of testing going on to make sure
>that this doesn't break anything.
I always test my engine with ponder=off to get (almost) reproducable results,
and because this way I need less computers to do my tests. My time allocation
code is the same if ponder is on or off.
I would say that I almost never myself use my program with pondering on. My beta
testers use it, so at least I have a little feedback if suddenly something's
wrong with it. I have tested myself pondering=on just before the World
Championship, but it was the first time I was using it in several months.
I don't care if people use my engine with ponder off in comp-comp games on a
single PC. I would even recommend to switch pondering off if you are using only
one PC.
I would never take seriously a result where both engines were allowed to think
on opponent's time on a single PC. Doing so makes no sense, and I am always very
upset to see so-called "experts" postings results of comp-comp on a single PC
with pondering on.
Christophe
>For _my_ program, "out-of-the-box" is the best way to run it, other than
>customizing hash table size for your specific hardware. Everything else is
>_exactly_ as I run it on ICC, which means that the 'defaults' are the best that
>I know how to do...
>
>Changing anything will very likely weaken it. Perhaps significantly...
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.