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Subject: Re: Two Questions about Time management and matches on 1 or 2 computers

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 12:22:41 08/29/99

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On August 29, 1999 at 13:40:00, pete wrote:

>On August 29, 1999 at 13:25:05, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On August 29, 1999 at 13:18:23, pete wrote:
>>
>>>1. ( I only post this one here , but it wasn't my idea )
>>>
>>>If the time management suffers that much if either ponder=on or ponder=off why
>>>not add code that checks if ponder is enabled or not at the start of the game
>>>and adjust your time management ? I really like this idea .
>>
>>
>>But the question is, adjust it to _what_?  Time management is non-trivial, and
>>most of us do a _lot_ of testing/tuning/tweaking with it before we are happy,
>>and some of us modify it on a regular basis as things show up.  Who wants to
>>take time to play hundreds or thousands of games with pondering off, just to
>>get the new time allocation code properly tuned? When we really don't play like
>>this _ever_.
>>
><snip>
>
>I understand that _you_ wouldn't . But is this also true for the programmers of
>commercial progs who have to face the fact that many users ( even professional
>testers ) will  test just like that and come to misleading conclusions ?
>For example Chessbase even advertises with results of that kind of matches . If
>I were a programmer for the Chessbase factory I sure would think about it.


Ed doesn't either.  And I wouldn't be surprised if everyone else doesn't spend
a lot of time on ponder=off games either.  It is simply 'unnatural' to run a
program that way... and most of us would rather spend time tuning the program
in the state it will play games, not in some crippled state that a user might
use to play games.  IE do we also tune for (a) tiny transposition tables;  (b)
no opening book;  (c) no databases (endgame); (d) modified user parameter
settings; (e) any other random thing a user might try???

IE I do my testing in the configuration that plays the best/strongest.  Not in
configurations that someone might use "just because it is there..."



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