Thread: Terrific Chess Program Tournament

  1. #1
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    Terrific Chess Program Tournament

    This is the finest automated chess program tournament that I've ever seen:

    Great display of the board, and controls for it, right in your browser.
    Wickedly fast multi-core cpu, scads of RAM.
    ultra fast SSD drive for the end game table base accesses.
    Many of the strongest programs

    You don't need to sign up, no spam, no advertising!

    All the details, here:
    TCEC - Division I - Live Broadcast

    Click on the Small, Medium or Large button if you can't see the chess figures, and they will appear.

    Other games in this tournament are available for viewing on the board, or playing through (click on the move, and the board adjusts to show the right data and position), via the pull down menu just right of the top of the chess board.

    You can also d/l all the games of the tournament.

    In addition to the most powerful Division I programs, there are also Division II and Division III tournaments, for less powerful (or unlucky) programs. All games and cross tables of results are available, through the above link.

    The quality of the machine being used, and the number of programs, along with the longer time controls, make this a rare chess program on-line tournament, indeed!

    Enjoy!

  2. #2
    That weird Java guy xniinja's Avatar
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    hopefully IBM doesn't come in with Deep Blue in kick everyones ass.

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    Deep Blue is actually quite weak by today's standards.

    To put it into scale, chess uses Elo rating system. A newbie would be ~1000, a serious tournament player would be >2000, and there are only a handful of people above 2600. Human world champions are usually slightly above 2800.

    Deep Blue barely beat the world champion at its time, so it would be ~2800.

    Nowadays many strong programs running on cheap PCs are in the 3000's range. Best programs even higher, but ratings aren't accurate in this range because the pool is too small.

    A 100 points difference roughly means 3:1 in terms of points (if you are lower by 100 points, you should win 1 in every 4 games on average).

  4. #4
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cyberfish View Post
    Deep Blue is actually quite weak by today's standards.
    I don't know much about Elo rating, but I wouldn't automatically assume you can compare a computer player to a human player using the same rating system as you use for human-to-human. It's an interesting figure to calculate but I wouldn't blindly make assumptions based on it.
    Code:
    //try
    //{
    	if (a) do { f( b); } while(1);
    	else   do { f(!b); } while(1);
    //}

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    That's true. Computers play in a very different way than humans.

    It's still pretty clear modern chess programs are much stronger than Deep Blue, though.

    Deep Blue barely beat Garry Kasparov (world chess champion at that time) with 2 wins - 3 draws - 1 loss.

    Nowadays, grand masters have trouble drawing best chess programs running on PCs even with a pawn odd (huge advantage at that level of play - masters often resign when losing a pawn without compensation) and heavy time odd (something like 10x).

  6. #6
    C++ Witch laserlight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cyberfish
    A 100 points difference roughly means 3:1 in terms of points (if you are lower by 100 points, you should win 1 in every 4 games on average).
    Actually, on the FIDE system a 200 points difference roughly means an expected 3:1 score.

    Quote Originally Posted by brewbuck
    I don't know much about Elo rating, but I wouldn't automatically assume you can compare a computer player to a human player using the same rating system as you use for human-to-human.
    There would be a better basis for a comparison if the human and computer players were on the same rating lists, but generally they are not. What we can do instead is to compare the matches and various official games played, although these are typically unrated.

    Quote Originally Posted by cyberfish
    Nowadays, grand masters have trouble drawing best chess programs running on PCs even with a pawn odd (huge advantage at that level of play - masters often resign when losing a pawn without compensation) and heavy time odd (something like 10x).
    Yeah, but then there is a huge disparity in strength between the strongest and weakest active grandmasters.
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)
    I get maybe two dozen requests for help with some sort of programming or design problem every day. Most have more sense than to send me hundreds of lines of code. If they do, I ask them to find the smallest example that exhibits the problem and send me that. Mostly, they then find the error themselves. "Finding the smallest program that demonstrates the error" is a powerful debugging tool.
    Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

  7. #7
    That weird Java guy xniinja's Avatar
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    just saying that IBM is pretty good at what they do and I cant wait for Watson to be on Jeopardy.

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