nice arguing, but the guys at Playchess argue exactly the other way around. They want a book to be perfect with a particular engine. Using that book for an enginetest is useless ...
Fixed starting position (especially if unknown

Bye
Ingo
George Tsavdaris wrote:I don't agree.IWB wrote:Absolutly right, I have no idea about books, but I know that books are completly in vain (or might even harm the result) if you want to test an engine!Graham Banks wrote:Ingo only operates Shredder in major tournaments. I don't think he writes the book as well.Sedat Canbaz wrote:Not allowing the games,probably he (Ingo) is afraid that the Book Authors will steal/copy his opening moves lines
I agree that testing without books, with a very large set of different starting positions probably gives which is the strongest engine generally so which is the strongest engine for analysis purposes but that is not the whole story.
Because and let's suppose that Houdini 1.5 is 3010 ELO and Rybka 4 2955 ELO in you conditions that is with a big set of random positions, then can we say that Houdini is generally the strongest program than Rybka by all means?
No! ►Since perhaps there is an opening book, let's call it OPB1 that if all engines in your tournament use it to make Rybka 4 stronger than Houdini 1.5 with the same conditions of your list and let's say it will make her have 3105 ELO and Houdini 1.5 3010.
Let now use a different opening book for Houdini. And another one and another one until we find which fits it better and make it stronger. Let's do the other with the other engines on your list.
►So perhaps there is a configuration of opening books OPB1, OPB2, OPB3, etc... for Rybka 4, Houdini 1.5, Stockfish 1.9.1, etc... that will make Rybka 4 to have e.g an ELO of 3090, Houdini an ELO of 3020 and that no opening book for Houdini can be found(or can exist) that can beat Rybka's 4 ELO by using the OPB1.
So our verdict would be that Rybka 4 + Opening Book-1 is the stronger Chess playing entity than Houdini 1.5 (with any opening book that exists).
Houdini 1.5 can't beat Rybka 4+OPB1 no matter what.
These 2 ways of testing(with and without opening books) are completely different in kind, but both are useful and interesting.