Author: Ed Schröder
Date: 01:38:07 12/28/99
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>Posted by Vincent Diepeveen on December 27, 1999 at 15:48:18: > >>At least once a week I receive email in similar wordings. That's of course >>very nice stuff to read but what puzzles me is Rebel's progress through the >>years in this respect. >> >>I mean this: I am a 1800 player, very bad in tactics but with a positional >>understanding of 2000, maybe a bit more. How to judge progress in Rebel's >>positional understanding every time I add new chess knowledge? > >Statistically spoken you should not even near to 1500 Ed. > >Non actively chess playing people are hugely overestimating their >chessstrength/insight. > >I can't find you at any dutch rating list, >so my assumption is that you're one of those guys. You can be right you also can be wrong. When I was 14-15 years I became a member of a chess club and left after a few weeks because of all the smoke (mainly cigars) and never returned to a chess club. I have played several youth tournaments in The Hague (in the AEGON building) and from that time is my estimated 1800 elo rating. >Working on a chess engine sure doesn't improve playing strength, >as you let the program solve stuff instead of solving it yourself. Maybe this is true for you but it isn't for me. I can certainly say my positional understanding has improved programming Rebel. My tactical skills have gone down a lot because of laziness, lack of interest of course due to the fact I have a program for that, why torture my brain when a simple mouse click will do the job. >If i have worked on diep in the afternoon, then in the evening i play >like big shit to be objectively measuring what happens... > >>Has Rebel improved in playing humans since version 8,9,10 and now Rebel >>Century? To answer this question precise you have to realize that hardware >>has improved too during the years and people tend not to play old versions >>which makes it even more difficult to judge its progress. > >Very accurate said. Apart from that another aspect needs not >to be forgotten: i am used now to fight against crafty at duals >and misssilicon at a K6-3, and Hossa at its latest hardware. > >If i then get against an oldie, i will suddenly do a lot better than >i would have done in the past. > >So where humans have adjusted to the stronger programs, advances in >theory, and some other things, the program is still showing the same >performance. If I understand you right you say that "comp-comp" is your only criterion to judge Diep's progress? I did the very same in my early days but changed that way of testing after 4-5 years. >>Since times I use the following guide-line to decide which version is best: >>- test sets (about 1000 positions) 30% as a first impression. > >ECM+BK nowadays? My database is about 85% positional based positions and 15% are about tactics. There are about 20-25 ECM positions. Don't know what BK means. >>- auto232 results (30%) >>- my personal impression based on my own style and feelings (40%) this >>includes the GM challenge games as well. > >>How do other programmers decide which version is best? and maybe more >>important which criteria is involved? > >I test carefully what the evaluation verbosely prints >in a position where the bugfixes to the patterns applies to. > >Positions it played wrong in the past (5000 or something and growing >each day nearly, but i only pick a few from which i think apply). I do the same. And the most worse onces first. >Then it's released to my testers and depending upon their results and my >findings i fix bugs in it and decide where to expand again. You are a reasonable chess player, 2200 I believe. What is your main criterion to judge a version? >When talking about a non-lineair change of search however i feel it's not >so easy to decide. Right, search solves many positional errors. >Let's take for example last ply pruning. It's easy to make last ply pruning >such that it does a lot better at testsets. > >But does it play better then? Not in my opinion. It just scores better. >I find that hard to judge. I have simply thrown all forward pruning >out of DIEP and feel a lot more happier. It plays a lot better now, >but has a way lower rating in blitz at single cpu machines at icc, >the advantage in playing strength can be basically is in my opinion >because of evaluation bugfixes. You are absolutely right about pruning. The main change from Rebel7 to Rebel8 was a very narrow selective search resulting in deep ply-depth's. To my surprise the thing topped the SSDF list with +65 (or so) while Rebel never had been a serious candidate on SSDF. But I also have seen the other side of the medal, the holes because of selective search pruning essential moves and losing games because of positional blunders. I changed selective search a lot since version 8 fixing the holes losing some ply-depth but I got back a lot more stable Rebel as a result. >>I also am curious on opinions if Rebel Century is clearly better than let's > >>say Rebel8 when the subject is playing style which is something different >>than playing strength (my opinion and view). > >I personally feel century is the same engine with a few more tactical >extensions and a new book. So i see hardly difference, considering that >tactical testsets like ECM, which were solved very bad by rebel8, do >not get taken into account in my judgement of engine strength, as i found >rebel8 already anything but tactical weak. Well..... Rebel8 did very well on SSDF. If it was so bad in tactics you can't enter the SSDF list as no.1 with +65 on no.2. Maybe you can explain to me why ECM is so important for you? Do you use all 600/700/800 positions or just a selection? Ed
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