some thoughts about winboard programs etc..

[Aaron]

Geschrieben von: / Posted by: Aaron at 19 March 2000 12:20:48:
Time control
What the difference between time controls like
1)All in 300s
2)40 moves in 300s
3)300+2
Which programs excel at these time controls. I find Crafty178 by far best at the first. But 40moves/300s ,several programs like Goliath, comet are equal. Having tested much for 300s+2

At the time control 1800s, Gromit3.0 looks very strong. I wonder if SOS does well at this as well

Regarding opening books..
I find that Crafty tends to have a problem with playing a good opening as Black. It tends to favour Centre counter and Philidor's defence as black. And it does extremly badly in those lines..Coming out with a -1.5 or more ..
I remembering reading a article by Dr Hyatt explaining Crafty's book learning in ICCJA or something..
As i remember it has 2 parts
1)Results learning- If crafty loses it will try to avoid the same opening line
2)Learning based on evaluation- If the total evalution of the next 10 moves after out of book is bad it will avoid the line.
The thing is crafty has now suffered lots of losses+bad positions in the centre counter and philidor defence..Instead of switching openings, it starts thinking alot earlier eg 1 e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3 Nc3 Qa5 4 d4 Nf6 5 Nf3 and it starts thinking where in the past it could blitz out a lot more before coming out of book..
Could it be that all moves all now considered bad such that it has no good choices in the opening book ?(downloaded from Dr Hyatt's website ,12+Mb )
This is kinda stupid, Crafty should totally abandon this defence and switch to something else..It has but unfortunately now it like Philidor 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 d6 lines which is slightly inferior..
Again, it's slow in learning that Philidor is bad for most part..
There is progress of a sort since after 200+ Blitz games (some weighting I know) it nows chooses petroff sometimes which at least is a reasonable defence..
Anyway, I now use the crafty book on Dan Corbit site, where Crafty prefers to play 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 , or rarely sicilian..
A quick thought, any one attempted to find out what defences suit the various programs by running the positions in Nun's test on them? I know the positions on the Nunn's test are a little general , but at least it helps narrow the scope down..
Can someone try this..
Say run Crafty as black vers 5 strong winboard programs at 2hrs games in the various Nunn's position and see if it does clearly better at some position..