Author: Graham Laight
Date: 15:53:23 01/09/00
Go up one level in this thread
On January 09, 2000 at 17:02:53, Gerrit Reubold wrote: >Hi Graham, > > >On January 08, 2000 at 11:32:53, Graham Laight wrote: > >>I have tried Bringer - and I like it! Thanks for telling me about it. >> >>It took less than 3 minutes to download, and, after unzipping it, I could fire >>it up and play it! >> >>I played it myself and was comprehensively beaten. >> >>The following games were all played on an HP Onmibook 4100, 266 Mhz, NT4, and I >>have not downloaded Bringer's optional "extra large" opening book, because I am >>personally not very interested in openings (which is often a grave weakness in >>my game!). >> >>Against Kasp2100, it went into the late middlegame a pawn ahead, and 2100 >>cleverly created a passed pawn in the centre. Before it was able to do anything, >>though, Bringer swapped off the pieces, then created it's own passed pawn on the >>a-file - but this passed pawn was out of reach of 2100's king. I resigned on >>behalf of 2100. >> >>I then tried it against 2 DOS programs on my 200 Mhz PC (this is probably fair, >>because I assume that NT steals a lot of processor time): >> >>Against CS-Tal '96, Bringer kept on raising it's evaluation move by move, then >>dropping back down to almost equal again! The game was very exciting, and the >>suspense was almost unbearable. Suddenly, Bringer's evaluation went high, and >>eventually it demonstrated why it was so confident by comprehensively winning. >> >>Finally, I tried it against Rebel Decade 2, assuming that this strong program >>would beat it easily. Wrong again! Bringer's evaluation rose high long before >>Decade's moved away from close to equal. Bringer won the game brilliantly. Even >>more astonishingly - Decade 2 consistently used much more time to select its >>moves. >> >>Against all 3 strong programs, it always seemed to evaluate the position better >>than they did, and saw the evaluation changes sooner than they did. It seemed to >>have a better understanding of the positions. > >Good results for the Bringer, however, don't overestimate its strength after a >few games. Playing it against the top engines (commercial and freeware) will >give you different results. OK. I have not tried to give an actual estimate of strength. But I do know this: of the programs in my collection, it is the first one where I truly have no idea why it's choosing the moves it is. When I got comprehensively beaten by it, I assumed I had just played badly. After playing the other games, and watching how (from the eval) it clearly saw things MUCH earlier than Decade 2.0 (which absolutely crushes me), I had to say it felt strong. Playing it reminded me of the only time I have played a human IM. I kept thinking, "this is OK - I'm doing very well against such a strong player". Then, all of a sudden, my position just totally collapsed, I was check mated, and I didn't know why. Watching Bringer play reminds me of this experience - I just don't understand why it chooses the moves it does - victory just "emerges". But, as a (self estimated) 1700 player, I cannot truly judge it's strength. But it sure as hell seems strong to me. >> >>There are a few changes I would personally like to see in this program: >> >>* Should recognise draw by repetition. When tinkering with it myself, we moved >>back and forth through the same position several times, and it did not flag the >>draw > >Someone else (Peter Berger) mentioned this some days ago, unfortunately, I am >unable to reproduce it. Bringer claims a draw, both when playing it in its own >GUI and as a winboard engine. How do I reproduce the bug? BTW, was Bringers >score 0.00 while repeating the moves? Sorry - I didn't take note of that - I'll try again tomorrow. What I did was play until I was losing, then swapped sides, and tried to win. Then we got to a position where both players were moving a piece back and forth between 2 squares. After 3 reps, something should have happened - but it kept on repeating, at 5 seconds per move. btw - I'm using the "current" version - not the new "beta" version. I'm using the Bringer GUI (which is good, btw). >> >>* An "autoplay" option would be nice > >Do you mean a possibility for Bringer playing a position agains Bringer? I had Yes - the program going ahead and automatically making the moves for both sides. >this once, broke it a year ago and didn't care about repairing it: the >"Computer-Computer" button is disabled. I don't think this feature is important >with the possibility to interface Bringer to other engines per Autoplayer or per >Winboard. Is it important? It may not be important to everyone, but I personally use it quite a lot. Sometimes, I feel that the only way to get closer to the truth in a position is to go away and let the computer "play it out" until the situation becomes more clear. So, offering it as a menu option would make this "customer" very happy! >> >>* I would like to see the squares flash when the computer moves. I don't like >>having to look at the move list to see what the opponent has done. I wish more >>programs would flash the squares being moved to/from like Hiarcs can > >I thought about small "recent-squares-indicators", instead of flashing the >squares. Maybe a thin frame or a dot. If I have time, I will implement this for >the next version. Excellent! It doesn't have to be flashing squares. CM2100 (yes - I admit to being a happy owner of it!) animates its piece moves. Anything like this would be good. Bringer moves the piece instantaneously - unless you're focused on the right part of the board, you'd miss it. >> >>Overall though, I wholeheartedly approve of this nice program! >> >>-g > > >Greetings, >Gerrit Good luck in the ongoing blitz tourny currently in progress! Thanks for making the effort to make the process of getting and running this nice program so easy. -g
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