Author: Peter Kappler
Date: 20:17:17 10/05/99
Go up one level in this thread
On October 05, 1999 at 22:26:29, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On October 05, 1999 at 20:26:59, Peter Kappler wrote: > >> >>Bob, >> >>This is really a shame, because Crafty is the best known of all the winboard >>engines, and is often used as *the* standard for assessing the strength of other >>programs. Anytime I hear that "program X" is a really strong amateur engine, my >>first thought is "well, lets just see how it stacks up against Crafty". >> >>As much as possible, I think you should try to address some of these >>single-computer winboard issues - especially the no-ponder time management >>problem, which just doesn't seem that difficult. Problems that can't be solved >>should at least be quantified, performance-wise, and this information could be >>published. As Christopher said in his previous post - if the net effect is 5 or >>10 ELO points, who really cares? On the other hand, if you can prove that for >>Crafty the difference is 50 or 75 ELO points, then at least people will take >>this into account when interpreting results. >> >>--Peter > > >The problem is not as easy to address as you think. The current time allocation >code was developed over _many_ months of testing, going thru log files, checking >how it was doing at various points in the game, etc. I don't have the time to >do that again with ponder=off. The only place to do that would be on ICC. And >would take a _lot_ of time, while weakening crafty substantially while the >testing is going on. > >In short, why test in a mode it is not designed to run in? Convenience. Single-computer winboard matches are very easy to setup and run. > I added ponder=off >solely for testing, so that I can get reproducible results over several moves >when adding something new. It wasn't designed to allow single computer games >for anything other than testing specific things that are modified... The >easiest thing to do would be to remove the ponder=off option, as that would >definitely solve the 'problem' and would only take a few seconds of testing to >do... I think this would annoy a lot of Crafty users (myself included) who enjoy playing Winboard matches. I realize that these matches can be played with both engines pondering, but it seems to me that this will produce inferior games compared to ponder=off. (All the wasted CPU cycles on incorrect pondering.) > to modify the timing code takes a lot of work. Mike Byrne and I spent >months looking at this stuff and tweaking it for the various modes like the >icc inc/no inc games, normal primary/secondary time control games, etc. Doing >it all again for ponder=off is a big waste of time, overall, when there is al- >ready way too little time to work on the things that need work... Fair enough, I respect your decision, but then I think you should be willing to bite your tongue when people post their 'ponder=off' Winboard tournament results... --Peter
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