Fritz9 vs HIARCS10

After reading countless postings about how Fritz is yesterday's news and HIARCS can easily cream it, HIARCS gets better depth more quickly, blah blah blah, I decided to run my own little engine tournament to see for myself.

In a 40/40 format, 319MB each for hash table, permanent brain off, both having access to my EGTB directory, and each using their own current opening book, the results were not even close.

Fritz9 - 1 .5 .5 1 0 1 1 .5 1 1
HIARCS10 - 0 .5 .5 0 1 0 0 .5 0 0

For the math impaired that is 7.5 to 2.5.

I really expected it to be a lot closer. But, for me anyway, I will be chuckling to myself the next time I see one of the postings dissing Fritz. It obviously still knows what it is doing.

I might be wrong, but if I wanted to compare engine strength I would turn the books off, give them standard opening positions, then reverse colours.

Originally posted by ThudanBlunder
Maybe I am wrong, but if I wanted to compare engine strength I would turn the books off, give them standard opening positions, then reverse colours.

1.e4 c5!!!!!!

Originally posted by prosoccer
1.e4 c5!!!!!!

As you mention it, I have never seen any bookless engine play the Sicilian. And until recently they never even played the Ruy.

Originally posted by ThudanBlunder
As you mention it, I have never seen a bookless engine play the Sicilian. And until recently they never even played the Ruy.

My Fritz 8 always play the Petroff when opening databases are turned off.

Originally posted by ThudanBlunder
Maybe I am wrong, but if I wanted to compare engine strength I would turn the books off, give them standard opening positions, then reverse colours.

That is 'a' way to run the test, but in my opinion not a very good one. Most engines play openings horribly without their books. This test compared what really matters to me, and probably what matters to most people. In essence, if you use 'engine x' how strong is it?

If you are asserting that HIARCS would have won more games had the books been turned off (and you may be right, I haven't tested that) all that would mean to me is that the programmers spent some time hard coding some basic openings that would give it a middle game advantage against a program that just assumed it would be using its book.

Opening books are a part of the engine as far as I am concerned, just like opening knowledge is a part of any of us. Those of us who are better versed in opening theory, who have a better 'opening book', have stronger middle game positions than our weaker counterparts.

I wouldn't presume to take away a significant part of what a particular engine package had to offer and then call it an engine test.

Strange, my H10 tends to come out about 50% against F9.

Maybe you didnt use the default settings on the engine. I first tried using H10 on aggressive mode in playchess.....it got hammered totally.

Yeah, you really proved it... Forget about the people that have run hundreds of games and have come to a different conclusion.

Originally posted by TippedKing
That is 'a' way to run the test, but in my opinion not a very good one. Most engines play openings horribly without their books. This test compared what really matters to me, and probably what matters to most people. In essence, if you use 'engine x' how strong is it?

If you are asserting that HIARCS would have won more games had the books been turn ...[text shortened]... t part of what a particular engine package had to offer and then call it an engine test.

All you achieve by pitting engine against engine is finding out which engine performs the best against other engines. That's just one measure of strength and in fact not the measure of strength most consumers would really be interested in.
I think the real strength of an engine lies in it's analysis. You'd test this by giving the engine tough positions to analyse and seeing how long it took to find the key idea.

Originally posted by TippedKing
If you are asserting that HIARCS would have won more games had the books been turned off (and you may be right, I haven't tested that) all that would mean to me is that the programmers spent some time hard coding some basic openings that would give it a middle game advantage against a program that just assumed it would be using its book.

Well OK, I wouldn't want to disappoint it. :'(

While I take your point about wanting to evaluate the whole package, I am more interested in which engine can find the positionally best moves for itself without being told what they are. By the way, it is always dodgy running these matches on the same machine.

Originally posted by ThudanBlunder
Well OK, I wouldn't want to disappoint it. :'(

While I take your point about wanting to evaluate the whole package, I am more interested in which engine can find the positionally best moves for itself without being told what they are. By the way, it is always dodgy running these matches on the same machine.

Turning Persistant Brain off should get rid of most problems due to engines thinking during the opponent's turn. However, I don't know what happens with Hash tables. Are they cleared at the end of every turn or will black's hash table be available to him during the next turn?

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
Turning Persistant Brain off should get rid of most problems due to engines thinking during the opponent's turn. However, I don't know what happens with Hash tables. Are they cleared at the end of every turn or will black's hash table be available to him during the next turn?

That is probably the case with the Fritz GUI. But I wouldn't play a match with Chessmaster on the same machine. I am pretty sure the hash tables are available until they are emptied, either manually or by ending the game/match.

Hiarcs 10 smokes Fritz 9

Originally posted by ThudanBlunder
That is probably the case with the Fritz GUI. But I wouldn't play a match with Chessmaster on the same machine. I am pretty sure the hash tables are available until they are emptied, either manually or by ending the game/match.

Yes but old hash table data is written over once the table is full. What if one side starts overwriting data from the other engine?

Originally posted by HomerJSimpson
Hiarcs 10 smokes Fritz 9

That's only true in the pirated versions.