Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Test suites - can they reliably predict ELO?

Author: John Warfield

Date: 11:27:39 12/12/99

Go up one level in this thread


On December 12, 1999 at 06:26:50, Enrique Irazoqui wrote:

>On December 11, 1999 at 20:18:45, John Warfield wrote:
>
>>On December 11, 1999 at 19:46:50, Bertil Eklund wrote:
>>
>>>On December 11, 1999 at 17:52:56, Tom King wrote:
>>>
>>>>Which of the well known test suites predicts the strength of chess programs most
>>>>accurately?
>>>>
>>>>I ask this, because I recently made some *slight* mods. to the evaluation
>>>>function in my program, Francesca. I ran the LCT-2 suite, and the results
>>>>indicated that it was a wash - the modification gave me about 5 ELO points,
>>>>apparently.
>>>>
>>>>I then ran a series of fast games against another amateur program. I realize
>>>>it's important to play a large number of games, to reduce the margin of error,
>>>>so I ran two matches of 65 games. The result was this:
>>>>
>>>>MATCH 1
>>>>"Normal" Francesca scored 37% against the amateur program.
>>>>
>>>>MATCH 2
>>>>"Modified" Francesca scored 45% against the amateur program.
>>>>
>>>>Quite a difference! It implies that the modification is worth over 50 ELO. I
>>>>guess I need to play more games, against a variety of programs to verify whether
>>>>this improvement is real, or imaginary.
>>>>
>>>>Anyhow, beware of reading too much into ELO predictions of test suites..
>>>>
>>>>Cheers All,
>>>>Tom
>>>
>>>Hi!
>>>
>>>Mr Irazoquis secret test-suite is very impressing! I think it´s about 111
>>>positions. He can predict a new programs strength better than any other test I
>>>have seen so far. If his predictions remains as good as his previous results, I
>>>hope we can stop publishing our list and just play for fun.
>>>
>>>Bertil SSDF
>>
>>  Why is this Test secret??
>
>I don't publish my test because the moment I do it will be cooked and become
>worthless. This is one of the reasons that make well known test suites
>inaccurate, aside from the fact that they have few positions, some of these
>positions are ambiguous or plain wrong and the rating formula doesn't make
>sense. Results are so erratic and unrealistic that, for example, Fritz comes
>best at the BS test and worst at the BT. Etc. etc.
>
>A couple of months ago we started talking about test suites during one of the
>Rebel GM games at ICC, and a programmer was straightforward enough to say that a
>test won't work because he would cook it next day...
>
>My test has by now 130 positions not included in any other test and took me 11
>months so far to put it together, and quite a bit longer to figure it out, so
>you can imagine that I feel quite reluctant to throw it to the garbage. But it
>is a bit of a catch 22 situation: If I don't publish it, no one will trust it;
>if I do, no one should. :(
>
>In case you are interested, this is my current result of latest programs:
>
>PIII-500    Test    SSDF scale
>RT            0        2691
>CM6K        -16        2675
>N732        -27        2664
>F6-F6a      -33        2658
>F532        -33        2658
>H732        -38        2653
>J5          -70        2621
>C171       -104        2587
>
>Now I am running it with Shredder 4, Genius 6.5 and Zarkov 5, but it takes 2
>boooooring days per program and I feel quite lazy at the moment.
>
>Enrique


  HI Enrique


  If you ever decide to release this test, I would like to be one of the first
to recieve it.



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.