fern wrote:..must lose to me from time to time.
[...]
Fern
I am working or thinking of ways how to do it. From a research of other engines with personality styles created, I got disappointed when the lowest level around 600 or 1000 elo is still able to mate me. I intentionally played a blunder move but this little elo creature was able to capitalize which in real life a 1000 elo guy is not able to see .
Try my attempt to improve from these supposedly fun personality. I created a personality where if you blunder, the engine will also pretend that it did not see it. Example "MyLevel" where it attempts to always equalize, most often it will lose to a player because what it thinks as equal is actually not after some deep analysis. Now if you go below that MyLevel (4, 3, 2, 1, 0, Min) your attacking capability will be tested because it hardly defends itself until its score is below 1000 or so depends on the level. Beware of level Min where that style will give you mate in 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 depends on how you want it to end in number of moves - Losers chess. This is unfortunate, that engine is Sigla, capable of only playing s-chess or seirawan chess.
Last edited by Ferdy on Wed Apr 18, 2012 9:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
fern wrote:..must lose to me from time to time. After that, a gui full of frills and bells.
Fern
What I want from an engine beside being over 3000+ is to be able to detect, impossible to find or time consuming for engines, sacrifices.
Unfortunately most engines have difficulties sacrificing and they don't have the right tool to make the correct analysis. Therefore, they should have the analystical and sacrifice capabilities of Sting SF 2.0 (beta):
Try convincing those 3000+ elo engine authors to create a personality where it will sacrifice material as long as the remaining material is still capable to win and the score of that sacrifice move will not be worse than a margin of say 80 centi pawns from the best score of the search found so far. Increasing that margin will be more fun .
I go for it's style to look at different games through different eyes. I also am particular about the GUI that houses it. CB GUI is my baby, I am comfortable with it and visually it gives me all the info I need to know.
Being able to play with the parameters of the engine is a nice touch too.
pichy wrote:I find it hard to believe that most of the people who post here are only interested in getting the engines that that have the higher rating as if all that they want to do is to pit engine vs engine. I want more from an engine than just a high Elo, such as being able to solve simple positions that even a Human Master can solve.
That's a great question, I will pay attention to the answers as I am a chess author.
For me personally the holy grail of computer chess is getting program to play strong positional chess. Being able to see mate in 30 and being superb in tactics - well ... what program is not already superb in this area? So it's important to me (just from my own personal wish list point of view) to do something different than what every other program can do. Ironically, Komodo is one of the best tactical engines anyway (although not the best) which is just a side-effect of being very strong.
I'm going to leave out user-interface features, because I don't think that is what you are really asking about. But another thing that is important is to have a program that is just plain different. A lot of programs play very similar, in some ways all chess program do, and I think a lot of people want variety and you will see that many of us here are interested not just in a strong or the strongest program but have MANY programs in their collection and appreciate the differences.
Personally I'm not really big on problem solving but I know that is important to some people. Komodo was designed with the idea of playing games with people and other programs, not solving composed problems - I guess that goes back to may statement about tactics being only a minor consideration for me personally.
What I do HATE is a program with lot's of knowledge gaps. Unfortunately every single program has that! There is no general solution except to work harder. What is rather silly to see is a program like Komodo or Critter playing 3000+ ELO chess and then getting into some ending that it cannot understand but that a 1200 ELO player easily understands. Please note that I don't mean ridiculous composed positions designed specifically to throw off computers where a tempo or two changes everything such as counting pawn races and such, but serious evaluation issues that do not involve tactics.
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
pichy wrote:I find it hard to believe that most of the people who post here are only interested in getting the engines that that have the higher rating as if all that they want to do is to pit engine vs engine. I want more from an engine than just a high Elo, such as being able to solve simple positions that even a Human Master can solve.
I would have thought that the higher the elo, the more it would do what a human can do. So by pitting them against each other, you will eventually get the one which does the best on all fronts.
I'm actually rather sure that already now, the top elo program can hardly be beaten by any human, and not much longer, ever.
[soon, with just a few more elo, it should also clear up its few remaining blind spots. But this too, will be seen in elo].
S.Taylor wrote:
soon, with just a few more elo, it should also clear up its few remaining blind spots.
Alas, I doubt this is true.
-Sam
Why not? Won't clearing up present blind spots give it more elo, and not doing so, impede some future elo?
I know what you are referring to, for instance in this position underneath Critter, Rybka, Stockfish and Komodo (3000 + engines) all play the wrong move leading into a draw, instead of chosing Bf8+ and with a few more moves forcing the exchance of Rook for Queen + the h pawn and winning the game.
Now take a look at Houdini which is in a class by itself, simply amazing
Jorge, interesting position. This is a zugzwang problem which may cause a problem to engines because of null moves.
Here's Houdini's take, using 3 threads on a Core i5-750:
Code:
6R1/8/2pB3k/2P4p/5p1q/5P2/4P1K1/8 w - -
Engine: Houdini DEV 3T (2048 MB)
by Robert Houdart
S.Taylor wrote:
soon, with just a few more elo, it should also clear up its few remaining blind spots.
Alas, I doubt this is true.
-Sam
Why not? Won't clearing up present blind spots give it more elo, and not doing so, impede some future elo?
I know what you are referring to, for instance in this position underneath Critter, Rybka, Stockfish and Komodo (3000 + engines) all play the wrong move leading into a draw, instead of chosing Bf8+ and with a few more moves forcing the exchance of Rook for Queen + the h pawn and winning the game.
Now take a look at Houdini which is in a class by itself, simply amazing
Jorge, interesting position. This is a zugzwang problem which may cause a problem to engines because of null moves.
Here's Houdini's take, using 3 threads on a Core i5-750:
Code:
6R1/8/2pB3k/2P4p/5p1q/5P2/4P1K1/8 w - -
Engine: Houdini DEV 3T (2048 MB)
by Robert Houdart
.
- Losers chess. This is unfortunate, that engine is Sigla, capable of only playing s-chess or seirawan chess.
