bob wrote:My only comment is that to do this, you must play ponder=off. Otherwise the better program will predict many moves right, and use all the opponent's think time to correctly ponder, eliminating most of the time handicap advantage...
Yes, you are very right about that. The time odds only has a well-defined effect with ponder off. But that is what I always do anyway. Although I run on a dual-core machine, I rather run two tournaments simultaneously with twice slower time control and ponder off than one with ponder on. Because ponder time is partly wasted, and prime search time never is.
So to judge the search quality of an engine I use ponder off. Only if I explicitly want to compare two versions of a program with different ponder algorithms, I occasionally test with ponder on.
Hi, Harm, there is a new bonus engine version of SMIRF MS-171g (for donators only). I repaired a small bug related to mating situations. You will find it for download as usual at: http://www.10x8.net/down/SmirfEngine.dll
OK. Next Event I will play this new version. The current time-odds tourney is meant mostly to get a more accurate fix on the quality of the weak engines, by providing a larger variety of opponents at their own level. And to test the new WinBoard support for time odds in the first place. So I didn't bother replacing Smirf before I started it.
Of course, replacing a participant during an event rarely does make sense. Because SMIRF did not have done much of such automated competitions, there are for sure some more of those avoidable killer weaknesses like playing SMIRF's unbalanced time management, which now should have become more meaningful - so I hope.
Indeed, it requires a lot of trial and error before things run smoothly. This is exactly why excersizes like this are so useful.
Btw, the Chess PC will be off line from now for an hour or so, as I will move it to another room, and install a wireless network adapter to get it back on line.
Should be back on line now. My Chess PC now has a differennt internal IP address, as it is now on my wireless network in stead of connected by cable (I moved it back into the attic).
hgm wrote:
Please let me know if you can reach it from the outside; it is something I cannot test myself from here. ( http://80.100.28.169/gothic/battle.html )
Hello again, Harm. There had been a severe integer numeric bug within SMIRF's positional evaluation function. Luckily I have been able to remove it. Thus there is a new version MS-172a (for donators only) ready for download at the well known place.
