Strong amateur tournament (90m+30s) First selection

[Kurt Utzinger]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 24 May 2004 14:27:11:


Possible participants
- Aristarch (ok)
- Comet (uncertain)
- Crafty (cancelled)
- Dragon (uncertain)
- Gothmog (ok)
- Pharaon (cancelled)
- SmarThink (ok)
- SOS (uncertain)
- Tao (uncertain)
- Thinker (cancelled)
- WildCat (uncertain)
- Yace (ok)
After having studied the many postings I have tried to make
a first selection of engines which will not participate
in our strong long amateur tournament:
Crafty
It is said that there would be a great gap in
playing strength between Crafty using ponder=off
or ponder=on. Since our matches are always played
on single PC's with ponder=off, I have cancelled
Crafty as I do not want to hear complaints and/or
excuses for this and that.
Pharaon
Is perhaps the "oldest" engine that has not been
updated for a long time. And results for such an
engine may be of less interest than newer engines.
Thinker
Does neither support EGTB nor update information
of the analysis process and this is not fun for
chess players who want to follow the game more deeply.
Kind regards
Kurt






Kurt & Rolf Chess

[Paul Hunter]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Paul Hunter at 24 May 2004 23:55:20:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Strong amateur tournament (90m+30s) First selection geschrieben von:/posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 24 May 2004 14:27:11:

Crafty
It is said that there would be a great gap in
playing strength between Crafty using ponder=off
or ponder=on. Since our matches are always played
on single PC's with ponder=off, I have cancelled
Crafty as I do not want to hear complaints and/or
excuses for this and that.
Thinker
Does neither support EGTB nor update information
of the analysis process and this is not fun for
chess players who want to follow the game more deeply.

Crafty is considered by many to be the best free amateur engine out there today. Leos premier div shows that. Aristarch finished only a point ahead of Crafty, and given the number of games played, that is almost insignificant. Plus, it is open-source.
As for Thinker, it finished on top in Leo's 1st div, against 17 others which mostly has EGTB support. Interestingly, the top 3 in that division does not have support for EGTB. Really, what good would EGTB do you if you can't do well in the middle game and end-up behind in the end-game?
Just my 2c.

[Kurt Utzinger]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 25 May 2004 07:59:52:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Strong amateur tournament (90m+30s) First selection geschrieben von:/posted by: Paul Hunter at 24 May 2004 23:55:20:

Crafty
It is said that there would be a great gap in
playing strength between Crafty using ponder=off
or ponder=on. Since our matches are always played
on single PC's with ponder=off, I have cancelled
Crafty as I do not want to hear complaints and/or
excuses for this and that.
Thinker
Does neither support EGTB nor update information
of the analysis process and this is not fun for
chess players who want to follow the game more deeply.

Crafty is considered by many to be the best free amateur engine out there today. Leos premier div shows that. Aristarch finished only a point ahead of Crafty, and given the number of games played, that is almost insignificant. Plus, it is open-source.
As for Thinker, it finished on top in Leo's 1st div, against 17 others which mostly has EGTB support. Interestingly, the top 3 in that division does not have support for EGTB. Really, what good would EGTB do you if you can't do well in the middle game and end-up behind in the end-game?
Just my 2c.

All this is correct, but I have often heard (greetings to Bob Hyatt)
that games of Crafty with ponder=off can't be taken seriously.

It might be that the use of EGTB is overestimated. I was perhaps
too much worried about some games I have seen of The King 3.23 in
a recent tourney (loss instead draw or draw instead win) but a first
glance at the games of our running RK 2004 tournament (90m+30s)
http://www.utzingerkurt.com/rk2004.htm I could not find such similarities.
However I very much dislike the behaviour of Thinker of not updating
the analysis information and to have to look at search depth 8 after
3 minutes of thinking time.