ode to ruffian

[ozziejoe]

GM's no longer seem to be able to beat the top chess engines, and much has been done to create handicaps to make things fair (but i fear these handicaps change the nature of the chess game).

I wonder if the once dominant Ruffian would dominate all humans on modern hardware. Imagine Ruffian on the best single processor machine you can find? Imagine also a top five GM playing ruffian like a human (e.g., no special anti-computer tactics). The games would be played at tournament time control, and a game would be played every two days. How would the GM go? (sorry no half point options, or poll would be unwieldy)

Note:Gm score is listed first ...7-0 means gm wins 7 to nothing

best
J

[ozziejoe]

and one question for the chess historians. When Ruffian 1.0.5 first came out, how highly was in ranked. Did it start as number 3 ?

best
J

[swami]

and one question for the chess historians. When Ruffian 1.0.5 first came out, how highly was in ranked. Did it start as number 3 ?

best
J

Number 6, I'd guess. Behind top 5 chessbase engines...
Shredder, Fritz, Junior, ChessTiger and Hiarcs were always leading around that time.

[swami]

I voted 5-2 in favour of Grandmasters.

[Graham Banks]

4-3 to Ruffian.

[Tony Thomas]

and one question for the chess historians. When Ruffian 1.0.5 first came out, how highly was in ranked. Did it start as number 3 ?

best
J

Number 6, I'd guess. Behind top 5 chessbase engines...
Shredder, Fritz, Junior, ChessTiger and Hiarcs were always leading around that time.

Dont forget Deep Sjeng 1.5, I think it was released around the same time..However, Ruffian was the undisputed free chess engine of the time, and it didnt get 10-30 point boost from any famous open source engines..

[Roman Hartmann]

Ruffian was a brand new engine when I got seriously interested in chess programming. That's probably also the reason it's among my favorite engines (Crafty, Yace and Fruit being the others on that list).

Grandmasters used to lose to weaker engines years before Ruffian was even released so I assume that Ruffian would do at least equally well.

Guessing a score is a bit harder though. A GM with a good preparation and knowing about certain weaknesses of an engine might be able to draw every game or even win a game or two while another playing the engine like he would play a human GM might lose every single game. But anyway, I say the result could be something like 2-5.

best regards
Roman

[Mike S.]

Matches are usually played with an even number of games.

In computer chess, Ruffian is ~300 Elo weaker than single Rybka 32 bit, but that is still "quite strong" in comparision to a human player.

[pedrox]

I voted 4-3 in favour of Grandmasters.

We can see now suffer ruffian in ChessWar B, in the round 4 has a loss against Twisted, carries 2/4

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

I voted 6-1 in favor of the GM especialy if Moro plays Ruffian