Final 4?...how about the Big 5; Blazing Fast!

[PawnStormZ]

     Hi All.
 
           Below are the results of 1,000 games at a time control of game in 1 second, plus 1/2 second per move.  Players were Critter 1.0, Houdini 1.5, Ivanhoe B47cB, Rybka 4.1, and Stockfish 2.0.1.
 
           Match conditions: Intel core I7 920 at 2.66GHz using 4 cores HT off; Win 7 64 Home Premimum; 6G RAM; pc doing nothing but the match while a game is being played.

           Each engine uses default settings except for the split-depth of Houdini which is set to 12 (tested best on this pc); no large pages; no end-game tablebases; 512 hash each; 4 cores each; ponder off.

           I used the excellent "ChessGUI" to run the match, set to give each engine a 1/10th second "overstep" margin to help avoid any time losses.
 
           The openings are played using random choices from a set of epd positions that was downloaded from this forum called 8moves.epd.  Each engine plays a position against all the others as Black and White.
 
           I was a little surprised at the fact that the new Rybka finished so close behind Houdini in their head-to-head match-up.  Based on their recent meeting at long time-control, I had expected a bigger gap.
 
 
           Engine                 Pts          Houdini_1.5          Rybka 4.1x64        Ivanhoe B47cB      Stockfish 2.0.1        Critter 1.0
 
   1    Houdini_1.5         249.5          xxxxx                 + 31 = 39 - 30      + 38 = 44 - 18        + 48 = 39 - 13       + 56 = 31 - 13
 
   2    Rybka 4.1            236.5        + 30 = 39 - 31        xxxxx                  + 30 = 51 - 19       + 43 = 38 - 19       + 53 = 33 - 14
 
   3    Ivanhoe B47cB    196.0        + 18 = 44 - 38      + 19 = 51 - 30         xxxxx                  +29 = 48 - 23        + 38 = 41 - 21
 
   4    Stockfish 2.0.1    177.0        + 13 = 39 - 48      + 19 = 38 - 43      + 23 = 48 - 29          xxxxx                   + 37 = 45 - 18
 
   5    Critter 1.0           141.0         + 13 = 31 - 56      + 14 = 33 - 53      + 21 = 41 - 38       + 18 = 45 - 37          xxxxx
 

                   Games are here... http://www.datafilehost.com/download-d0a98702.html
 

[Jouni]

With game in 1 minute level things are different for reason or another. In 100 game match Critter won Rybka 4.1 both with Chessbase and Arena GUI. I repeat test because I was surprised. Also Critter beats Stockfish at that level but is badly beaten by Houdini (takes long time to score one win).

Jouni

[PawnStormZ]

     
           Half a second per move seems to be too fast for Critter and Stockfish---at least in this match.  Though Stockfish did do pretty welll against Ivan.
 
           Clearly, the new Rybka does not have problems any more with a fast time-control.  I am very surprised by your result; Critter looks no match for Rybka in short games.  Maybe another go at 1 full second per move.