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Subject: Re: The importance of opening books -- a simple experiment

Author: Sandro Necchi

Date: 01:40:19 02/20/05

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On February 19, 2005 at 07:43:49, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On February 17, 2005 at 14:03:30, Tord Romstad wrote:

Hi Vincent,

I hope everything is well with you. I guess you'll meet Stefan at Paderborn.

>
>Don't do idiot experiments that just support the idiocy you invented yourself.
>
>IF you have an engine rated 3000 in strength THEN it will play virtually achieve
>2300 in the important games instead of 3000 when NOT using a book. So the book
>delivers 700 rating points.

This is a very interesting statement.
I agree with you and I know that the stronger an engine is the best it will get
from a good opening book, but I never estimated how much it would get reaching
3000 in strenght.

>
>Experiments with some idiot engine that is itself rated what is it, 2200,
>will be useless of course.
>
>Some years ago when engines were 2200 level it was the Mchess-Necchi team who
>said a book was worth 300, and he meant that obviously in the same way as i mean
>the 700 points at real high level.

Yes, you are correct.

>
>The weakest link is what counts.
>
>I don't care for your engine in that respect, let alone such stupid experiment.
>
>Take a strong engine from which you feel it is the best engine in the world.
>Show up without book in important events. World champ will be the best test.
>
>THEN calculate after a 100 years of doing that, what the odds were you won that
>event. You will see it's 0%.

Yes, here we agree too.

Sandro
>
>750 rating points is roughly meaning that a person A has 0% chance against
>person B.
>
>What i'm saying is that not using a book versus an excellent book is making that
>difference true. 700 rating points. Not a point less.
>
>Vincent
>
>>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



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