Losing on time

[bob]

I think you miss HIS point. Would someone REALLY want his program to slightly overstep the time control limit on each and every move? Doesn't seem reasonable. This reminds me of the old doubles game argument you used to jump on whenever it came up. Remember my response? Rather than complaining about the SSDF allowing doubles when YOU thought they should cull them and not count 'em, I told you you ought to fix your program so it would not repeat lost games multiple times. I took my own advice and spent a good bit of time adding "book learning" to Crafty and I never had to worry about playing the same opening over and over and losing every game as a result...

Funny that you bring up this old cow as both CCRL and CEGT don't allow opening books nor learning.

That's one way to play the events. Do they allow position learning? I'd imagine so.

[mvk]

Funny that you bring up this old cow as both CCRL and CEGT don't allow opening books nor learning.

That's one way to play the events. Do they allow position learning? I'd imagine so.

No.

[bob]

Funny that you bring up this old cow as both CCRL and CEGT don't allow opening books nor learning.

That's one way to play the events. Do they allow position learning? I'd imagine so.

No.

How do they prevent it? Do they reinstall everything from scratch after each and every game? Nothing else will work.

[bob]

Funny that you bring up this old cow as both CCRL and CEGT don't allow opening books nor learning.

That's one way to play the events. Do they allow position learning? I'd imagine so.

No.

SO the REAL answer is YES. We've seen programs in the past with hidden position learning inside the engine, that no one knew about. It would not be difficult to create a position learning file regardless of the option selected. This has been done in the past.

Only solution is to delete and re-install after every single game, which is painful, Not to mention having to clear any temp directories...

[bob]

In Sjef (my match-playing program for chess variants based on Sjaak) I have an option to ignore the flag and always give a certain minimum time to the engine. The idea here was to transition from a normal time control to a fixed-time-per-move time control once time is close to running out. The reason I did this was to improve the quality of play at ultra short time controls, so I could play more games (for better statistics) without the results being dominated by horrible moves played at move 40.

I don't think it actually worked all that well and I don't use the option anymore (in fact, I don't use Sjef all that often either - for some reason that I have yet to figure out the draw rate in self-play matches is much higher than if I run the match under XBoard, which is weird). In fact, using Fischer time-controls is probably a better idea for a similar overall effect.

I am reminded of the old "dance with the one that brung ya." That is, whatever you do, do it in the way you will do it in the important games. CCT events won't have such an option, if a program depends on it to avoid running out of time, it will lose over and over, unnecessarily.

ALL of my testing is done the same way. Normal time controls. Everything exactly as it will be when playing in tournaments. I do sometimes test with ponder=off to speed up testing, but I always run tests with ponder=on as well, to be sure nothing unexpected happens that could not happen with ponder=off.

I think crazy-fast time controls are a good "stress test" of the time allocation code. I like game/1 second. They fly by. You overstep the time limit very frequently and you lose on time.

[Rebel]

Funny that you bring up this old cow as both CCRL and CEGT don't allow opening books nor learning.

That's one way to play the events. Do they allow position learning? I'd imagine so.

No.

SO the REAL answer is YES. We've seen programs in the past with hidden position learning inside the engine, that no one knew about. It would not be difficult to create a position learning file regardless of the option selected.

And if they are exposed?

This has been done in the past.

Care to provide an example?

[bob]

Funny that you bring up this old cow as both CCRL and CEGT don't allow opening books nor learning.

That's one way to play the events. Do they allow position learning? I'd imagine so.

No.

SO the REAL answer is YES. We've seen programs in the past with hidden position learning inside the engine, that no one knew about. It would not be difficult to create a position learning file regardless of the option selected.

And if they are exposed?

This has been done in the past.

Care to provide an example?

Can I just say "Kopec/Bratko" and leave it at that?

There were a couple of examples of "hidden books" many years ago. I don't remember how, because ICGA doesn't care, you can use any kind of book you want. I don't remember which commercial programmer did the hidden opening book trick, I'll try to search back and see if I can find it. And it was DEFINITELY a commercial author for the hidden book.

[Rebel]

Funny that you bring up this old cow as both CCRL and CEGT don't allow opening books nor learning.

That's one way to play the events. Do they allow position learning? I'd imagine so.

No.

SO the REAL answer is YES. We've seen programs in the past with hidden position learning inside the engine, that no one knew about. It would not be difficult to create a position learning file regardless of the option selected.

And if they are exposed?

This has been done in the past.

Care to provide an example?

Can I just say "Kopec/Bratko" and leave it at that?

I think you meant the BT2630 test suite.

[Rebel]

Funny that you bring up this old cow as both CCRL and CEGT don't allow opening books nor learning.

That's one way to play the events. Do they allow position learning? I'd imagine so.

No.

SO the REAL answer is YES. We've seen programs in the past with hidden position learning inside the engine, that no one knew about. It would not be difficult to create a position learning file regardless of the option selected.

And if they are exposed?

This has been done in the past.

Care to provide an example?

Can I just say "Kopec/Bratko" and leave it at that?

There were a couple of examples of "hidden books" many years ago. I don't remember how, because ICGA doesn't care, you can use any kind of book you want. I don't remember which commercial programmer did the hidden opening book trick, I'll try to search back and see if I can find it. And it was DEFINITELY a commercial author for the hidden book.

So no known CEGT/CCRL cheating case.

[bob]

Funny that you bring up this old cow as both CCRL and CEGT don't allow opening books nor learning.

That's one way to play the events. Do they allow position learning? I'd imagine so.

No.

SO the REAL answer is YES. We've seen programs in the past with hidden position learning inside the engine, that no one knew about. It would not be difficult to create a position learning file regardless of the option selected.

And if they are exposed?

This has been done in the past.

Care to provide an example?

Can I just say "Kopec/Bratko" and leave it at that?

There were a couple of examples of "hidden books" many years ago. I don't remember how, because ICGA doesn't care, you can use any kind of book you want. I don't remember which commercial programmer did the hidden opening book trick, I'll try to search back and see if I can find it. And it was DEFINITELY a commercial author for the hidden book.

So no known CEGT/CCRL cheating case.

Who would know unless they carefully examined every program's log file? Based on past experience, if someone can gain an advantage there's always someone that will try.