whereagles wrote:Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote: SF is able to deliver mate on its own in such positions, so why deprive it of a well-deserved win?
Because, as others mentioned, the engines played in the assumption that the 50-moves rule was in effect. If Houdini was aware that cursed wins would indeed be scored as wins, it might have chosen other moves that may have led to a draw (or not..). Since we'll never know that, an adjudication is the solutions. In fact, this is what adjudication in sports is for.
Note also that people have checked some posts ago that Houdini did in fact had other drawish moves. It did not play those because engine efficiency requires it to opt for a drawish move as soon it finds one. And of course, a drawish TB hit is the fastest way to do it, so other draw possibilities are automatically pruned.
As I mentioned in my last post, I agree that cursed wins should be scored as wins, but only in engine tournaments where all engines have access to tablebases that can disable the 50-moves rule (you can also make a pretty good case for that in correspondence matches).
This is not the case of TCEC, because it has dozens of entrant engines and not all comply to that requirement. TCEC is all about quick access to the best live chess there is: one-click universal access, LTC games, all of the top engines, live chat flaming.. (lol). It would be weird to have different rules depending on whether engines have "50-moves /OFF" tablebase switches or not, so I think Anton should just adjust cutechess to score cursed wins as draws and otherwise leave TCEC as it is.
As to human games, well 200 moves (as you mentioned in the other thread, which seems to be broken for me at the moment) is far too much, even in special positions. That would lead to the dominant player to keep on playing drawn positions for a long time, hoping that his opponent messes up (he risks nothing). In some mind sports this sort of futile play is considered unethical and is liable to disciplinary sanctions. I agree with that view because it does not contribute to the promotion of the sport.
current TCEC is automatically run, so no need to change anything, that would create even more problems. you even do not have a clue how many cursed wins have been pruned during search, by which engines, and what they would have picked instead.
for future TCEC, why not simply allow cursed wins to be scored as wins in tbs and adjudicated so by the GUI, engines that use tbs will deservedly convert their advantageous position, engines that do not use tbs will not suffer in any conceivable way? I think this is the rigth way to go ahead. And sooner or later, this will happen.
Problem is much more serious, and I am certain you know it: by applying the 50-moves rule, engines deliberately do not choose the best move. Why do that?
I see nothing messy about an extended rule, it could be applied in 10 minutes by Ronald in the tbs, in another 10 minute by different GUI authors, and in another 10 minutes by different engine authors. 30 minutes hard work will bring about much more interesting chess, and much more legitimate outcomes.
all you need is for some protocol to specify that an extended draw rule would apply strictly in the case of computer chess tournaments. the protocol could be written in another 20 minutes. Once the protocol comes into force, gui, engine and tbs authors will comply in no time at all.
Problem is, where should such a rule be specified?
As to human games and your sports analogy, quite the contrary, if there is a win, the stronger player has the rigth to play for it, that would be the prupose of the rule, and a tbs win is an achievable win, of course.