Big amateur tournament: participants searched

[Uri Blass]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Uri Blass at 23 May 2004 22:53:33:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Tord Romstad at 23 May 2004 22:34:21:

I see you have already chosen Gothmog and I sure it is due to it's tatical play, in my tests Tao has passed Gothmog in tactical test suites and balances this with good positional play.

I am not familiar with Tao, but Gothmog is not good in tactical test suites at all, and I am sure
you will find lots of engines which perform better in test suites. Gothmog is simply too slow
to be a good tactician.

This is not convincing.
speed improvement are linear and if we are interested in long time control(the tournament is not blitz) the main question is not the linear stuff but the
exponential stuff.
I did not test gothmog to say something about the relative tactical strength of it but the only acceptable excuse to say that gothmog is not good in tactics is that you tested it in some tactical tests and it performed worse than other engines.

Uri

[Roger Brown]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Roger Brown at 23 May 2004 22:54:10:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Needed 8 participants for strong long amateur tournament geschrieben von:/posted by: Will Singleton at 23 May 2004 22:43:48:

[Tom Likens]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Tom Likens at 23 May 2004 23:34:53:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Needed 8 participants for strong long amateur tournament geschrieben von:/posted by: Will Singleton at 23 May 2004 22:43:48:

From the answers received I have already 11 engines to choose from:
a difficult task for me to come to a decision. Is there no Elo list
of games at longer time controls to make things easier for me?
01) Aristarch
02) Comet
03) Crafty
04) Dragon
05) Gothmog
06) Pharaon
07) SmarThink
08) SOS
09) Tao
10) Thinker
11) Yace

Gosh, I don't know. Maybe this guy Leo, I think he has a list.

Leo, Leo, why does that name sound so familiar?
--tom

[Bryan Hofmann]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Bryan Hofmann at 23 May 2004 23:42:36:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Tord Romstad at 23 May 2004 22:34:21:

I see you have already chosen Gothmog and I sure it is due to it's tatical play, in my tests Tao has passed Gothmog in tactical test suites and balances this with good positional play.

I am not familiar with Tao, but Gothmog is not good in tactical test suites at all, and I am sure
you will find lots of engines which perform better in test suites. Gothmog is simply too slow
to be a good tactician.
What makes Gothmog different from most other engines is that it is more willing to make
speculative (and often unsound) sacrifices. I would like to think that this is why Kurt have
chosen Gothmog to be one of the participants. Of course it is possible that Tao is similar
(or even more extreme) in this respect; I cannot know because I have never seen the engine
in action.
Tord

The results of Gothmog were impressive and someone else did testing with it and posted the results on this board about 2 months ago. If I remember correctly in the tests that were posted here (by someone else) it beat out Rebel and Ruffian and some other top a engines. That is what sparked me to run the tests with Tao to see how it would do. As always you are being humble about your work, don't kid yourself Gothmog is strong in tactics.

[Olivier Deville]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Olivier Deville at 24 May 2004 08:49:02:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: needed 8 participants for Strong long amateur tournament geschrieben von:/posted by: Dan Honeycutt at 23 May 2004 21:56:13:




ChessWar

[Igor Korshunov]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Igor Korshunov at 24. May 2004 09:07:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 23 May 2004 17:44:55:

We are planning to play a big amateur tournament
time control 120'/60, ponder=off, using Wb2Uci.exe,
under Fritz8-GUI, with 8 participants under the
following conditions:
- own book must be available for each engine
- access to EGTB possible
- no commercial version of the engines on the market
- only versions released for public (no change during tournament)
and are now wondering which are the strongest engines we should/could
use in this long tournament over 70 rounds whereby two (2) programs may
not belong to the best ones provided they play a particular interesting
style. In this respect: we have already reserved a place for Gothmog 0.4.8.
Considering these conditions we see that no List, no Ktulu, no Ruffian
can participate. I am awaiting your suggestions for this tournament
possibly with explanations why engine X should be included.
Kurt

Hi Kurt!
I hope that WildCat meets all your demends and she is strong enough.
Recently she improved strenght at long time controls (due to better move ordering). May be 30 - 60 Elo points.
I hope you allow to participate to my simple engine.
Also don't forget about following great engines:
Amyan, LG, GLC, AnMon.
Best wishes,
Igor

P.S. I don't think that it is good to include Tao, because it doesn't know chess rules.

[Tord Romstad]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Tord Romstad at 24 May 2004 10:23:00:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Bryan Hofmann at 23 May 2004 23:42:36:

The results of Gothmog were impressive and someone else did testing with it and posted the results on this board about 2 months ago. If I remember correctly in the tests that were posted here (by someone else) it beat out Rebel and Ruffian and some other top a engines.
That is what sparked me to run the tests with Tao to see how it would do. As always you are being humble about your work, don't kid yourself Gothmog is strong in tactics.

Yes, but that was in ECM-GCP, which is hardly a good test suite. Like in so
many test suites, the majority of positions are just sacrifical kingside attacks.
Gothmog likes to play such attacks, whether they work or not. Gothmog scores
relatively well in ECM-GCP because it is tuned to play aggressively, not because
it is fast at tactics.
If you find a test suite containing "avoid move" positions, where the moves to
be avoided are promising-looking but unsound sacrifices, you will no doubt see
awful results for my engine.
This is a myth. It is somewhat stronger in tactics than you would expect from
an engine with such a low N/s count, but it is not among the best tacticians,
even if we limit the discussion to the amateur engines. The explanation of the
myth is probably that it is quite good at finding flashy, eye-catching tactics,
but below average at finding the more mundane types of tactics which usually
decide games, but which are often not noticed by observers.
Tord

[Joachim Rang]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Joachim Rang at 24 May 2004 10:34:56:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Needed 8 participants for strong long amateur tournament geschrieben von:/posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 23 May 2004 22:31:48:

From the answers received I have already 11 engines to choose from:
a difficult task for me to come to a decision. Is there no Elo list
of games at longer time controls to make things easier for me?
01) Aristarch
02) Comet
03) Crafty
04) Dragon
05) Gothmog
06) Pharaon
07) SmarThink
08) SOS
09) Tao
10) Thinker
11) Yace

my subjective rating list of these engines would look like the following one:
1) Aristarch
2) SOS
3) Crafty (with ponder=on and computer-command active (afaik not possible under Fritz)
4) SmarThink
5) Thinker
6) Yace
7) Tao
8)Comet
9) Pharaon
10) Gothmog
11) Dragon
I would like to see Thinker partisipating, since it is not present in many rating lists I know but is definitely a strong engine.
I think Dragon, Pharaon and Comet are not so strong.
regards Joachim
P.S.: Why do you plan to play under the Fritz-GUI? The wb2uci was subject to many doubts of the quality of the adapter and it seems to me unnecessary to use an adapter, when there is a GUI out with WinBoard and UCI-Support like Arena. Since you are not using any chessbase-engine I see no reason to choose Fritz as the GUI. Do you have particular reasons not to use Arena?

[Igor Gorelikov]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Igor Gorelikov at 24 May 2004 10:39:58:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 23 May 2004 17:44:55:

We are planning to play a big amateur tournament
time control 120'/60, ponder=off, using Wb2Uci.exe,
under Fritz8-GUI, with 8 participants under the
following conditions:
- own book must be available for each engine
- access to EGTB possible
- no commercial version of the engines on the market
- only versions released for public (no change during tournament)
and are now wondering which are the strongest engines we should/could
use in this long tournament over 70 rounds whereby two (2) programs may
not belong to the best ones provided they play a particular interesting
style. In this respect: we have already reserved a place for Gothmog 0.4.8.
Considering these conditions we see that no List, no Ktulu, no Ruffian
can participate. I am awaiting your suggestions for this tournament
possibly with explanations why engine X should be included.
Kurt

Here is top 8 from the current rating list of New Infinite Loop-5

Place Program Elo + - Games Score Av.Op. Draws

1. Ruffian 1.0.1 : 2707 44 67 134 72.0 % 2543 24.6 %
2. Tao 5.6 : 2698 127 150 25 64.0 % 2598 16.0 %
3. SOS 4 for Arena : 2665 82 70 61 57.4 % 2613 32.8 %
4. Gothmog 0.4.7 : 2649 139 122 25 56.0 % 2607 24.0 %
5. AnMon 5.30 : 2628 139 135 25 56.0 % 2586 16.0 %
6. Aristarch 4.40 : 2620 112 102 30 65.0 % 2512 36.7 %
7. Chinito 3.1 : 2617 70 70 66 50.0 % 2617 36.4 %
8. Thinker 4.5b : 2585 117 131 30 61.7 % 2503 16.7 %
And here are results of my Stars Only event (on faster hardware)
1: Delfi 4.4 59.5 / 90
2: Ruffian 1.0.1 58.0 / 90
3: SOS 4 for Arena 49.5 / 90
4: AnMon 5.30 46.0 / 90
5: Chinito 3.25 41.5 / 90
6: Ktulu 4.1 41.0 / 90
7: Crafty 16.19 40.5 / 90
8: SOS.3 for Arena 40.0 / 90
9: SOS 11.99 39.0 / 90
10: Chinito 3.1 35.0 / 90

Best regards to your tournament,
Igor
http://www.digichess.gr/infiniteloop/home.php

[Joachim Rang]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Joachim Rang at 24 May 2004 10:44:15:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Needed 8 participants for strong long amateur tournament geschrieben von:/posted by: Joachim Rang at 24 May 2004 10:34:56:

of course Dragon is most likely stronger than Gothmog.
Other strong engines are GLC and Amyan, but I don't want to make thins even more complex.

From the answers received I have already 11 engines to choose from:
a difficult task for me to come to a decision. Is there no Elo list
of games at longer time controls to make things easier for me?
01) Aristarch
02) Comet
03) Crafty
04) Dragon
05) Gothmog
06) Pharaon
07) SmarThink
08) SOS
09) Tao
10) Thinker
11) Yace

my subjective rating list of these engines would look like the following one:
1) Aristarch
2) SOS
3) Crafty (with ponder=on and computer-command active (afaik not possible under Fritz)
4) SmarThink
5) Thinker
6) Yace
7) Tao
8)Comet
9) Pharaon
10) Gothmog
11) Dragon
I would like to see Thinker partisipating, since it is not present in many rating lists I know but is definitely a strong engine.
I think Dragon, Pharaon and Comet are not so strong.
regards Joachim
P.S.: Why do you plan to play under the Fritz-GUI? The wb2uci was subject to many doubts of the quality of the adapter and it seems to me unnecessary to use an adapter, when there is a GUI out with WinBoard and UCI-Support like Arena. Since you are not using any chessbase-engine I see no reason to choose Fritz as the GUI. Do you have particular reasons not to use Arena?

[Kurt Utzinger]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 24 May 2004 12:27:36:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Needed 8 participants for strong long amateur tournament geschrieben von:/posted by: Joachim Rang at 24 May 2004 10:34:56:

my subjective rating list of these engines would look like the following one:
1) Aristarch
2) SOS
3) Crafty (with ponder=on and computer-command active (afaik not possible under Fritz)
4) SmarThink
5) Thinker
6) Yace
7) Tao
8)Comet
9) Pharaon
10) Gothmog
11) Dragon
I would like to see Thinker partisipating, since it is not present in many rating lists I know but is definitely a strong engine.
I think Dragon, Pharaon and Comet are not so strong.
regards Joachim
P.S.: Why do you plan to play under the Fritz-GUI? The wb2uci was subject to many doubts of the quality of the adapter and it seems to me unnecessary to use an adapter, when there is a GUI out with WinBoard and UCI-Support like Arena. Since you are not using any chessbase-engine I see no reason to choose Fritz as the GUI. Do you have particular reasons not to use Arena?

Hi Joachim
Good question: I would like to use the fine Arena-GUI or even
Winboard but chessfriend Rolf Bühler has never touched another
GUI than Fritz. Maybe I can convince him to make an exception
for this long tournament.
Regards
Kurt



Kurt & Rolf Chess

[Tord Romstad]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Tord Romstad at 24 May 2004 12:30:06:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Igor Korshunov at 24. May 2004 09:07:

Hi Igor!

I hope that WildCat meets all your demends and she is strong enough.

Yes, WildCat is a very strong and interesting engine which many people tend to
overlook (I wonder why). I wish I could afford an appartment big enough to
contain a computer capable of running her (I don't have enough room for a Windows
computer in addition to my Macintosh PowerBook).

I would love to see WildCat among the participants.
Tord

[Kurt Utzinger]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 24 May 2004 12:32:33:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Martin Baumung at 23. May 2004 21:25:

We are planning to play a big amateur tournament
time control 120'/60, ponder=off, using Wb2Uci.exe,
under Fritz8-GUI, with 8 participants under the
following conditions:
- own book must be available for each engine
- access to EGTB possible
- no commercial version of the engines on the market
- only versions released for public (no change during tournament)
and are now wondering which are the strongest engines we should/could
use in this long tournament over 70 rounds whereby two (2) programs may
not belong to the best ones provided they play a particular interesting
style. In this respect: we have already reserved a place for Gothmog 0.4.8.
Considering these conditions we see that no List, no Ktulu, no Ruffian
can participate. I am awaiting your suggestions for this tournament
possibly with explanations why engine X should be included.
Kurt

Well... my suggestions are SmarThink 0.17a and Thinker 4.6b. Even if the latter one doesn't support EGTBs. But Thinker 4.6b is a really strong engine with great endgame skills and I think it would perform rather well in such a tournament.
Martin

I am going to think about it but fear that an engine without EGTB-support
will score 5-10 % less than with EGTB's. On the other hand: a trial may be
justified with an engine like Thinker 4.6b which seems to have a great
endgame skill.
Regards
Kurt





Kurt & Rolf Chess

[Joachim Rang]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Joachim Rang at 24 May 2004 14:45:18:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Needed 8 participants for strong long amateur tournament geschrieben von:/posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 24 May 2004 12:27:36:

my subjective rating list of these engines would look like the following one:
1) Aristarch
2) SOS
3) Crafty (with ponder=on and computer-command active (afaik not possible under Fritz)
4) SmarThink
5) Thinker
6) Yace
7) Tao
8)Comet
9) Pharaon
10) Gothmog
11) Dragon
I would like to see Thinker partisipating, since it is not present in many rating lists I know but is definitely a strong engine.
I think Dragon, Pharaon and Comet are not so strong.
regards Joachim
P.S.: Why do you plan to play under the Fritz-GUI? The wb2uci was subject to many doubts of the quality of the adapter and it seems to me unnecessary to use an adapter, when there is a GUI out with WinBoard and UCI-Support like Arena. Since you are not using any chessbase-engine I see no reason to choose Fritz as the GUI. Do you have particular reasons not to use Arena?

Hi Joachim
Good question: I would like to use the fine Arena-GUI or even
Winboard but chessfriend Rolf Bühler has never touched another
GUI than Fritz. Maybe I can convince him to make an exception
for this long tournament.
Regards
Kurt

you definitely should encourage him to use Arena. The tournament dialogue is very similiar to that of Fritz and very intuitive. The only "complex" task is to set up every engine correctly.
regards Joachim

[Mogens Larsen]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Mogens Larsen at 24 May 2004 15:13:59:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 23 May 2004 17:44:55:

We are planning to play a big amateur tournament
time control 120'/60, ponder=off, using Wb2Uci.exe,
under Fritz8-GUI, with 8 participants under the
following conditions:
- own book must be available for each engine
- access to EGTB possible
- no commercial version of the engines on the market
- only versions released for public (no change during tournament)
and are now wondering which are the strongest engines we should/could
use in this long tournament over 70 rounds whereby two (2) programs may
not belong to the best ones provided they play a particular interesting
style. In this respect: we have already reserved a place for Gothmog 0.4.8.
Considering these conditions we see that no List, no Ktulu, no Ruffian
can participate. I am awaiting your suggestions for this tournament
possibly with explanations why engine X should be included.
Kurt

Hey Kurt,
If I had to choose eight participants, I would consider three parameters: strength, style and date of latest release. In that order. With that in mind I have the following suggestion:
1) Aristarch.
2) Crafty.
3) SmarThink.
4) Tao.
5) SOS.
6) Thinker.
The last spot should go to either AnMon, El Chinito, Little Goliath or an experimental version of Yace. I don't think Comet and Gothmog are strong enough.
I would choose AnMon and El Chinito.
Regards,
Mogens

[Tord Romstad]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Tord Romstad at 24 May 2004 15:14:11:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 24 May 2004 12:32:33:

I am going to think about it but fear that an engine without EGTB-support
will score 5-10 % less than with EGTB's. On the other hand: a trial may be
justified with an engine like Thinker 4.6b which seems to have a great
endgame skill.

I think you are greatly overestimating the importance of EGTBs for practical
play. The tests I have seen indicate that the difference in playing strength
with and without EGTBs is usually too small to be measured. While I believe
that EGTBs can be of great help to engines with poor endgame skills, I doubt
that they would be very useful for an endgame specialist like Thinker.
Tord

[Mogens Larsen]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Mogens Larsen at 24 May 2004 15:19:11:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Mogens Larsen at 24 May 2004 15:13:59:

Aaah.. if only I could read and comprehend as well as check the threads before posting nonsense. Alas, it doesn't seem possible.
Regards,
Mogens

[Alex Schmidt]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Alex Schmidt at 24 May 2004 15:39:43:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Correction: geschrieben von:/posted by: Joachim Rang at 24 May 2004 10:44:15:

Other strong engines are GLC and Amyan, but I don't want to make thins even more complex.

You are of course right, GLC, Amyan and Thinker would have been on my suggestion list too, but unfortunately they don't support EGTB's. Kurt want to use only engines with EGTB support in his tournament.
Comet could be the second engine with 'interesting style' but it is also very strong with long timecontrol.
Best,
Alex

[Bryan Hofmann]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Bryan Hofmann at 24 May 2004 15:54:32:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Igor Korshunov at 24. May 2004 09:07:

We are planning to play a big amateur tournament
time control 120'/60, ponder=off, using Wb2Uci.exe,
under Fritz8-GUI, with 8 participants under the
following conditions:
- own book must be available for each engine
- access to EGTB possible
- no commercial version of the engines on the market
- only versions released for public (no change during tournament)
and are now wondering which are the strongest engines we should/could
use in this long tournament over 70 rounds whereby two (2) programs may
not belong to the best ones provided they play a particular interesting
style. In this respect: we have already reserved a place for Gothmog 0.4.8.
Considering these conditions we see that no List, no Ktulu, no Ruffian
can participate. I am awaiting your suggestions for this tournament
possibly with explanations why engine X should be included.
Kurt

Hi Kurt!
I hope that WildCat meets all your demends and she is strong enough.
Recently she improved strenght at long time controls (due to better move ordering). May be 30 - 60 Elo points.
I hope you allow to participate to my simple engine.
Also don't forget about following great engines:
Amyan, LG, GLC, AnMon.
Best wishes,
Igor

P.S. I don't think that it is good to include Tao, because it doesn't know chess rules.

There is only one item Tao does not understand and that is under-promotion. So stating that it does not understand chess rules is simply not true as it is only one rule.

[Kurt Utzinger]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Kurt Utzinger at 24 May 2004 16:22:44:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Big amateur tournament: participants searched geschrieben von:/posted by: Tord Romstad at 24 May 2004 15:14:11:

I am going to think about it but fear that an engine without EGTB-support
will score 5-10 % less than with EGTB's. On the other hand: a trial may be
justified with an engine like Thinker 4.6b which seems to have a great
endgame skill.

I think you are greatly overestimating the importance of EGTBs for practical
play. The tests I have seen indicate that the difference in playing strength
with and without EGTBs is usually too small to be measured. While I believe
that EGTBs can be of great help to engines with poor endgame skills, I doubt
that they would be very useful for an endgame specialist like Thinker.
Tord

Hi Tord
My statement is based on my experience with The King 3.23. This
engine even supports EGTB but not in its search. And in some games
the program missed a win or a draw so that after 50 games there
is a difference of 2-5 (missing) points.
Kurt