Author: Dan Honeycutt
Date: 10:55:25 02/18/05
Go up one level in this thread
On February 17, 2005 at 17:48:18, Uri Blass wrote: >On February 17, 2005 at 14:42:41, Dan Honeycutt wrote: > >>On February 17, 2005 at 14:03:30, Tord Romstad wrote: >> >>>A couple of days ago, a well-known programmer and regular >>>poster here on the CCC claimed that a good opening book >>>was worth at least 700 Elo points. I thought this number >>>looked completely outrageous, and decided to do a simple >>>experiment. >>> >>>I am the author of a basic and minimalistic UCI chess engine >>>called Glaurung. Source code and executables for Mac OS X, >>>Linux and Windows can be found at the following URL: >>> >>>http://www.math.uio.no/~romstad/glaurung/glaurung.html >>> >>>Recently, I have played some test matches with Glaurung >>>against the strongest engine I have on my compter: Hiarcs >>>9.6. Not surprisingly, all such matches end in crushing >>>victories for Hiarcs. The last match I played ended >>>75-25 in Hiarcs' favor. >>> >>>As a crude test of the "good book=700 Elo" claim, I have >>>now repeated the match with identical program versions >>>and conditions, except that Hiarcs was now playing without >>>an opening book. Assuming that Hiarcs' book is worth 700 >>>Elo, the expected result of this second match would be >>>something like 95-5 in _Glaurung's_ favor. >>> >>>The actual result of the second match was very close to >>>the first match: Hiarcs won by 72-28. >>> >>>As far as I can see, this means that at least one of the >>>following must be true: >>> >>>a) The statement "good book=700 Elo" is lightyears away >>>from the truth. >>> >>>b) Hiarcs has an extremely bad opening book, and with a >>>half decent opening book it would be several hundred >>>rating points ahead of Shredder. >>> >>> >>>Tord >> >>Hi Tord: >> >>I too think 700 is a number from the twilight zone. But the statement, IIRC, >>was 700 points for a very good book vs no book. So you have to include the >>possibility: >> >>c) Glaurung's book is no good. > >Glaurung's book is not the subject here. > >Tord simply comapred hiarcs book with no book. > >He let Glaurung with it's own book to play agaisnt Hiarcs with it's book and let >Glaurung with it's own book play against Hiarcs with no book. > >Hiarcs with it's own book failed to perform even 100 elo better. > >Uri. All right then add the possibility: d) Hiarcs' book is no good. However you take it, to prove or disprove the statement you are going to have to test with a "good book". We know Arturo builds good books - you could test with Diep or Zappa. We know Sandro builds good books - you could test with Shredder. (This all supposes the authors are willing to let their tournament prepared books out, which I doubt). Until someone runs tests with a known "good book" verses "no book" Vincent's statement is not yet disproven. Dan H.
This page took 0.02 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.