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Subject: Re: Blitz - Is Fritz really the best?

Author: James T. Walker

Date: 13:45:59 08/16/99

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On August 15, 1999 at 22:50:09, Aloisio Ponti Lopes wrote:

>This was an engine-engine tournament, 3 min. + 3 sec/move increment, AMD K6-II
>300 MHz with 64 MB RAM, hash= 8 MB for each engine:
>
>1 Fritz 5.16.......... 8.5/12
>2 Crafty 16.13........ 6.0/12
>3 Hiarcs 7.32......... 5.5/12
>4 Comet B02........... 4.0/12
>
>I would like to know if this poor performance of Hiarcs on Blitz is expected, as
>it is a slow-searcher and the time control was really fast. Is Fritz really the
>best on Blitz?
>(Maybe Bruce Moreland does not agree with this...)
>
>A. Ponti

Hello,
I believe that the 8MB hash for Hiarcs is not enough for it to perform well.  I
run Hiarcs with a minimum of 64 Meg Hash memory.  On my K6 machine which has 256
Meg I run Hiarcs with 200 Meg hash memory.  My results of Hiarcs vs Fritz
indicate Hiarcs has only a 12 point advantage after 988 blitz games.  For
overall performance (Versus Junior,Nimzo, Crafty,CSTal-2,Comet B00,) Hiarcs has
only a 3 point elo advantage.  Overall Hiarcs has played 1578 Blitz games and
Fritz has played 1786 Blitz games.  I don't know how good Ferret is since I have
not seen it play on ICC in the 4 months I've been on and I don't have a copy.
From what I have seen, Fritz/Hiarcs are the top programs at blitz and it's hard
to separate the two.  Junior 5.0 is very close behind.  I have not played any
games with Fritz 5.16 since it does not have auto232 and all my games have been
auto232 games.  I've noticed the new Nimzo for Winboard is pretty strong at
blitz on ICC but I dont have a handle on just how strong.  Shredder is pretty
good too but I don't own a copy so can't say how strong compared to
Fritz/Hiarcs.  By the way, Fritz loses about 1 or 2 blitz games per hundred on
time.  Were it not for this fact It would be even closer or maybe ahead of
Hiarcs.  I have found the combination of Fritz/Hiarcs playing together to be
better than either one alone.  I usually use Fritz for the "Tactical" moves and
Hiarcs for the "Positional" moves and the endgame since it has the endgame
tablebases.
Jim Walker



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