Author: Vasik Rajlich
Date: 02:17:00 02/20/05
Go up one level in this thread
On February 19, 2005 at 07:43:49, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: >On February 17, 2005 at 14:03:30, Tord Romstad wrote: > >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. > >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. > >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%. > >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 > It's nice to have a good book, and naturally no top engine would pass up whatever rating boost it gives in a WCCC, so this hypothesis will never be tested. IMHO - modern computer chess games on sufficient hardware are decided by the positional level of the engine. That's the meat and potatoes - everything else is peanuts. The book goes up there with a few more NPS and solving WAC x in 0.23 seconds. Vas >>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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