World Draughts Forum

Rein, this was exactly my first (bigger) Codex project, a Qt implementation of the Damage GUI.

See screenshot, with the Kingsrow hub engine...

Bert

Let’s face it, AI is improving at coding incredibly rapidly. It’s a bit like Moore’s law, but now every 18 weeks instead of 18 months.


Good remark Rein.
To often we focus on the flaws of a new technology/development.
But neglect the speed in which it is improving.
Not sure if it is 18 weeks ...

Joost, i also dont think a 9p db will improve playing strength, it mainly serves a purpose for people (like professional players) who want to analyze the game.
The background of mentioning it, is that from move 40 onwards, one enters a regime (due to the databases) where you know the theoretical ...

Joost, thanks for sharing.
All my experiments reveal the same tendency.
If 2 programs/engines play fixed-depth matches, and you increase search-depth, then in general the ELO-difference becomes smaller, as the number of decisive (non-draw) games.

What is evident is that the advantage of another ...

Michel, thanks for sharing.
What is ELO wise still the gap compared with KR, with 1 core 1 min games, or a similar setup?

Bert

And you want to operate the computers yourself, so no computer-computer communication?

Bert

And in addition, as the Damage2026 GUI support HUB, several other engines can use this as the host GUI.
So far I tested (and it worked).
* Kingsrow (hub version)
* Tornado (special version from Frank)
* Horizon
* Scan
* Moby Dam

Bert

The current Damage GUI (Damage2026) supports this option.
But Im still in the update mode (together with Codex).

Bert

Joost, i also don't think it will have a measurable effect.
At least what I wanted to share, is that with tools like Codex, it is easy and fast to implement and test some new ideas.
However also Codex is not a miracle tool, you need (for now) remain the architect, and feed the tool with ideas.

Bert

In the CRC32 post from Gijsbert, Joost in a reply wrote
Using SIMD for the transposition table seems like a good idea, something I never thought of before.

As this was also on my mind for some time, but never started, I asked Codex to change my current Damage engine hash-table implementation into ...

Here the flexibility of Codex.

I wanted to study (fore example) games lost.
Now i can drag a cursor in the graph window and select a specific move.
I get a diagram with the actual position, and one where i can see the position after all moves are executed in the principal variation (pv).
In Damage ...

I played another match with Damage 18.6 against Kingsrow, similar result 7 losses, 149, draws, 2 unknowns. As the unknowns were a draw the final match result was 7 wins, 151 draws (perspective Kingsrow).
The "problem" with such a number is that it does not reveal if the draw games were interesting ...

I still believe that faster games is not the way forward.
The main way out, but that is my 5 cents, is something like killer draughts, or breakthrough draughts.
With the boundary conditions that practice should show that with increasing depth, the draw ratio does not move to 100% with the same speed ...

Hi Bert,

What are the results if you use 1 minute/75 moves? If I use 5 min/80 moves GWD draws all the time against Kingsrow, with 1 minute/75 moves sometimes GWD loses a game (but also sometimes wins).

GW


Gijsbert, the test I did this afternoon with 1 min/80 moves, 1 core , 6p db, both book ...

Michel, good idea, and another requirement only programmed in BASIC, no machine language allowed.

Bert