Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 15:34:50 09/04/05
Go up one level in this thread
On September 04, 2005 at 18:12:52, Steve Maughan wrote:
About 1 thing, you really must show more understanding of economics.
I have more cdroms on pre-order (either diep3d or zappa, whatever releases
first) than the total amount of sold shredder-classic GUI's past 4 years (not
counting the Ossi Weiner 'millennium deal').
You should worry instead about the monopoly of chessbase in Europe.
If you realize how big their helpdesk is in total and how many fulltime salaries
they pay in total a year, you will realize that the tens of millions of
importance they have in Fritz, simply means that they will do anything to let
fritz perform real well.
That includes that they are not so quick fixing unexpected bugs in their
interface to run engines from others.
Let's start collect a small list of problems you MIGHT face when a normal user
runs under Fritz and plays against another engine. I just quote things here
which EXPERIENCED testers didn't figure out themselves easily:
a) sets hashtable to 1 MB
b) control-f (rotating board which goes AUTOMATIC sometimes) resets learning
c) if you start default the fritz engine instead of uci engine, as Ed
Schroeder reports that means you already start at 5% score disadvantage
d) pressing newgame means your engine is put to random book moves
e) people hardly ever test with your own book, but instead use a book called
usually fritz8.ctg or something, which favours usually not your favourite engine
f) you receive weird time controls in their uci implementation sometimes. they
have the bug that at tournament time control sometimes your engine receives the
command like: "go movestogo 1 wtime 7000 btime 0", which means that your engine
has just 7 seconds to make a move right NOW. In reality the clock shows like 60
minutes left or so. See the problem of *this*?
g) many testers who tested had the problem that deepfritz8 was assigned 70%
system time against the other engine 30% system time. This is a problem MANY
testers have, and they never notice this problem
h) fritz avoids that its own native engines swap *ever*. This is well done by
them, however it means if users select just a tad small hashtables for your
engine, that YOUR engine is swapping. This could slow down your engine possible
factor 1000
i) fritz is very tough in arbitrating a game as lost on time, when it was a
bug in their own gui causing it.
For example auto232 is difficult with fritz, because it claims too quickly you
lost on time. This really loses at least 1 in 10 games this flag feature.
The list is endless, this is just a short summary of a FEW problems.
It is endless and endless. It basically means you have no chance when you test
under fritz with a non-native engine there. Please note shredder9 under fritz
has a SECRET native implementation and please note fritz engine itself has a
SECRET implementation.
Please give me the protocol fritz is using and i'll consider adding it to my GUI
in a fair way, without lobotomizing fritz.
Additional to all this, all the points GCP brought are very valid.
>GCP - Personally I think you've lost the plot here. I use Shredder 95% of the
>time and I'd prefer to continue to do so. Yes I'm also interested in the new
>GUI but I do not want to be forced to change. I think that UCI is now virtually
>a MUST for new engines and if Zappa does not support the sales will be lower -
>it's just my opinion - I could be wrong. I view the comments in the Zappa UCI
>thread as people trying to give consumer feedback before Anthony makes a
>commercial mistake - I certainly do not think they warrant being called
>hypocrites.
>
>Regards,
>
>Steve
>
>PS I'm somewhat insulted by the title of your post - IMO you're sailing close to
>the wind of warranting moderator intervention - maybe that was your intention
p.s. this is a very nasty suggestion you do here and implicates you:
a) have taken a side without objectivity
b) have zero financial overview
c) are not a sportive person. sportive persons prefer a fair contest between
engines and would encourage competition and more interfaces which are doing
things in a fair way.
p.s.2 : did you buy shredder9 classic?
Thanks,
Vincent
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