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Subject: Re: Is rebel sliding downhill?

Author: Bertil Eklund

Date: 11:05:43 01/18/00

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On January 18, 2000 at 13:23:45, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On January 17, 2000 at 16:46:52, Rajen Gupta wrote:
>
>>I remember when i 1st started reading the web comp chess reports-rebel8 was the
>>new champ-by a huge margin.since then there is no convincing evidence that later
>>versions of rebel are stronger than rebel8. perhaps someone who does extensive
>>testing like Mark Young or enrique can tell us (on the basis of actual tests and
>>comp vs comp games please, not merely on subjective impressions)the following:
>
>About Rebel. First of all let's see what did Rebel get so high
>at SSDF, as i guess that's what you refer to?
>
>Some months before rebel8 came out i emailed with Ed Schroeder. I emailed
>asking him about whether lazy evaluation worked for him. Ed denied using
>lazy evaluation.
>
>Some months later Rebel8 came out, basically searching a lot of nodes
>a second faster than rebel7/6, apart from that i didn't have the
>feeling rebel8 was much different from 7. Some say it was positionally
>weaker than 6/7. Well exactly that happens when using lazy evaluation.

Hi!

As usual you guess and speculates all over. Rebel8 was a major step in
Comp-chess, it was much stronger and MUCH MORE aggressive than its predecessors.
I have played over 5000 games with R8 and followed a lot of them.

>
>Recently Ed said he *always* used lazy evaluation in Rebel. Ed probably
>already somewhere in rebel used lazy evaluation.
>
>I felt rebel8 was tactical anything but weak.

When it arrived it was one of the strongest.

>For SSDF however rebel8 had 2 new things.
>First of all a big tournament book from which each line was already
>auto232 tested.

The book of Rebel8 is still good, but a bit narrow. I have written a big
tournament book that plays almost eveything, and the results are equal or maybe
slighly worse, but the program plays very good of its own.

>Secondly, and this gets really underestimated by everyone, it aborted
>games that were the same, within 2 moves out of book.
>Now obvious i'm not a fan of playing the same game over and over again,
>but considering the nature of the book in rebel, which has some lengthy
>and wide lines which
>i call 'killerlines' (lines that objectively aren't representing the
>state of the art theorem, but where you know in advance that you
>win against certain other programs with, as they 'fall' for the line).

Ed kindly supported us with the possibility to play doubles. Only use Rebel a
and it plays until mate, saves and play the same game again.

>So if you win 20 games from rebel8 with 1.d4 ... 2.a3
>then in fact your games get 19 time aborted

>Yet if in the richter rauzer a certain Qxe5 side line wins for rebel,
>then you might lose 10 games in a row, as in a positoin where you're
>already dead lost, there rebel is still in book having several
>possibilities.

Rebel had a very "simple" book-learner and was very bad on avoiding lost games.
It had no "aggressive" book-learner at all, didn´t try to repeat wins.

>Further the interpretation of the games. Rebel finds in endgame pawns
>worth very little. Let's look to rebel: boring openingsbook, but very
>good book. No questions about that.

It´s a matter of taste.

>This means that a game rebel wins is usual SHORT. A game that it loses it
>doesn't get bad out of book usual, so that is usual a rather long win.

There was many sharp lines, yes, and when it went wrong the games could be short
also.

>Auto232 player aborts such a game after a certain amount of moves, then
>rebel as it evaluates dead lost positions usually under -5, it puts a
>'?' so a question mark as the result of the game.

Games with score + or -5 was correctly reported 1-0 or 0-1, ? only if the game
stopped of some reason or it ended with a stalemate.

>I forgot but don't aborted games which are repeated twice are
also carrying a '?' as result?

No a parenthesis with a number (1) for one repetition.
From Rebel9, Rebel plays on in doubles, but in the counter it´s noticed that
there are doubles.

>Anyway, human factor gets *heavily* underestimated when interpreting results.

What is "human" factor.

>I'm not sure what SSDF does, how many '?' results does Karlsson receive?


??

>Anyway, this is already enough to explain the rating jump of Rebel at SSDF.

I can´t see any explanation at all from you. It simply was the best when it was
new.


Bertil SSDF

>
>>which is the strongest version of rebel
>
>>is rebel getting progressively weaker with each version or is this merely
>>because other programmes are getting disproportionately stronger?
>
>Of course a program never gets weaker. Others just learn how to beat it.
>
>>if rebel is actually getting weaker then what is the purpose of releasing new
>>versions?
>
>Don't you want to get updated with new versions?
>
>>rajen



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