Internet engine matches

[Krzychumag]

Michel tested in programme options PERMANENT BRAIN during game. Very a lot of mistakes are.

1. The program isn't saving moves for black and white during the game.

2. During the game when I played black while hitting the pawn, the program made a move but left the pawn on his place.

[Ed Gilbert]

It's available for download now:

http://mdgsoft.home.xs4all.nl/draughts/beta4.1.html

Hi Michel,

I installed it on 3 computers (XP 32-bit, Vista 64-bit, Win7 64-bit), but could not get it to run on any of them. On the 64-bit machines no user interface appeared, and after about 30 seconds I got a popup message from Windows that the program had stopped responding. On XP the interface window is displayed, but there is some error message about unable to connect to the engine. I have .net 4.0 installed on all 3 machines. Is there some other requirement for it to run?

-- Ed

[MichelG]

I installed it on 3 computers (XP 32-bit, Vista 64-bit, Win7 64-bit), but could not get it to run on any of them. On the 64-bit machines no user interface appeared, and after about 30 seconds I got a popup message from Windows that the program had stopped responding. On XP the interface window is displayed, but there is some error message about unable to connect to the engine. I have .net 4.0 installed on all 3 machines. Is there some other requirement for it to run?

-- Ed

I suspect dragon has problem creating a memory mapped file due to insufficient user rights. I haven't had the opportunity yet to look into it further.

Michel

[BertTuyt]

I worked on a more robust/reliable Search-Routine based on PVS, MCP, LMR and FHR.
As already posted, this is the base of the Damage changes/improvements.
In a later phase i will activate some other enhancements.
Next to that I also made some Evolution Function changes (like Breakthrough Routine).

As the prove of the pudding is in the eating, Damage played the "traditional" 158 game match against KingsRow.
Game/Match settings as usual 10 min Game, 1 core and no pondering.

The Match Result:
KingsRow 15 Win, Damage 5 Win, Draw 137, Unknown 1

At least not a result which is too bad, and it seems that Damage is improving step by step....

Now need to analyze the 15 Games lost by Damage, if they reveal some common clue.

Keep you all posted.

Bert

[Rein Halbersma]

I worked on a more robust/reliable Search-Routine based on PVS, MCP, LMR and FHR.
As already posted, this is the base of the Damage changes/improvements.
In a later phase i will activate some other enhancements.
Next to that I also made some Evolution Function changes (like Breakthrough Routine).

As the prove of the pudding is in the eating, Damage played the "traditional" 158 game match against KingsRow.
Game/Match settings as usual 10 min Game, 1 core and no pondering.

The Match Result:
KingsRow 15 Win, Damage 5 Win, Draw 137, Unknown 1

At least not a result which is too bad, and it seems that Damage is improving step by step....

Now need to analyze the 15 Games lost by Damage, if they reveal some common clue.

Keep you all posted.

Bert

That are encouraging results! Apropos keeping us "posted": why don't you post those winning/losing games for our entertainment?

More generally, I think that the computer draughts world is already so small that keeping stuff closed is not really productive, it's much more fun sharing your ideas/code (at least for me).

Rein

[BertTuyt]

Rein, thanks for your reply.

You are right the Draughts World is very small, at least I guess only (or less) then a hand full of programmers post on a regular basis.
No problem to post a file with the win/lost games, I was not sure if anyone was interested, outside Ed.

With respect to sharing ideas, also no issue.
Thats why i indicated the elements my Search is based on which was PVS, MCP, LMR and FHR.
If this is not sufficient, I will share all details you need....

Bert

[BertTuyt]

Here they are...

If someone would read/analyze the WL-games and provide some hints for me/Damage how/where to improve, this is highly appreciated.

Bert

[TAILLE]

Hi Bert,

I worked on a more robust/reliable Search-Routine based on PVS, MCP, LMR and FHR.
As already posted, this is the base of the Damage changes/improvements.
In a later phase i will activate some other enhancements.
Next to that I also made some Evolution Function changes (like Breakthrough Routine).

I easily imagine we all work on all these algorithms in order to try and build the best search routine.
As you know I do not use the PVS but a MTD-f best like procedure. I never tried the MCP procedure.
I tried several implementation of the LMR and FHR procedures. My current conclusion is that LMR might become unuseless if you choose an agressive FHR procedure. I never tried to implement the MCP procedure but here again, depending on how agressive is your FHR procedure, I believe the MCP cannot improve your search.

BTW, in any case the goal of a reduction is to accept to not solve some kind of problem in order to solve many others, more frequent.

As an exemple of problem difficult to resolve for a computer see the following position:

White to play and win

For a human it's not very difficult (a human see here the oppotunity to block completly the position) but for a computer .... ?

My feeling is the following : if your program is able to find this problem that means that your restriction/pruning mechanism is perhaps not agressive enough and you program may be weak in real games!

What is your feeling?

[Ed Gilbert]

I agree with you Gerard. A program that uses no search reductions may solve these kinds of problems easily but will do poorly in real games. It is important to use more CPU cycles on the better lines and aggressively reduce inferior lines.

-- Ed

[Ed Gilbert]

I installed it on 3 computers (XP 32-bit, Vista 64-bit, Win7 64-bit), but could not get it to run on any of them. On the 64-bit machines no user interface appeared, and after about 30 seconds I got a popup message from Windows that the program had stopped responding. On XP the interface window is displayed, but there is some error message about unable to connect to the engine. I have .net 4.0 installed on all 3 machines. Is there some other requirement for it to run?

With some help from Michel I was able to get the beta version of dragon running on my computers. I have to run it as administrator. I tried DXP, and found some problems with dragon running as a Follower, which Michel is fixing, but I was able to play some DXP GAYP games with dragon as Initiator. We should to be able to run a match of 2-move openings with his next update.

-- Ed

[BertTuyt]

Herewith the results of the most recent match Kingsrow - Damage.
As usual 1 core search, no pondering, 10 minutes game - time.
Kingsrow 3 wins, Damage 7 wins, Draw 148.

Bert

[BertTuyt]

Here are the WL Games.

Bert

[Rein Halbersma]

Herewith the results of the most recent match Kingsrow - Damage.
As usual 1 core search, no pondering, 10 minutes game - time.
Kingsrow 3 wins, Damage 7 wins, Draw 148.

Bert

So Damage beat Kingsrow?? That's a milestone!

[Ed Gilbert]

Congrats Bert. I knew it was only a matter of time before you guys would catch up.

Was that match using 6-piece db kingsrow and 7-piece damage like the others?

I am looking forward to trying your new damage.

-- Ed

[BertTuyt]

Hi Ed, yes it was.

So Kingsrow had a disadvantage basically, although I'm not able to quantify it, I guess that with a 7p against 7p Kingsrow and Damage are almost equal (or when one program performs better it is Kingsrow). The number of draws already reveals that it is a close call.

Anyway there is still much work to do here.
I need to implement the parallel search, better time control, pondering, resolve the bugs in the outpost and locks, and the search still goes crazy at times.
Also i still need to activate some code which i implemented during holiday (related to search extensions), which is not tested so far.
And last but not least, i need to compile a 8p DB to be really competitive.

So I'm sure that in the end Kingsrow is the better program, but at least Damage is making steps in the right direction.
I'm not sure what Damy, Maximus, Dragon, Sjende Bleyn is doing, but it feels that Damage is in the top3 , which is ok for me.

Bert