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[Bram Mourik]

TimoK wrote:

Hi Bram, Komodo strikes back! In a very interesting game with unbalanced material it managed to win with black against Houdini. In the beginning, Houdini made some strange moves (loss of tempo like Rh3 and shortly after Rh1 again). In this position, Komodo decides to give his queen and a pawn for two knights and a bishop: Code: 1r1qrnk1/3b2b1/3pp1p1/1pp1n1Bp/1P1NP2P/2N2P2/P2Q2P1/3R1BKR b - - 0 21 Black plays 21. cxd4. That was the right decision because white's queen doesn't manage to make an impact in this closed position. However blacks pieces do and therefore black is able to strengthen his position.

Hi Timo,

After 38 games, and two nice last wins with French opening, the LTC results between Komodo4 and Houdini2.0C in your Clash of the Titans are pretty the same as in the 100 games match between both, on Blitz level (5min 5 sec, of ATOMICC chess by Brent M http://atomicc-testing.blogspot.com/2012/03/houdini-20c-x64-komodo64-4-sse-results.html)
So no further closing of the ELO gap (just 15-20 ELO) between them at very LTC, as has been suggested by the author of Komodo, can be observed. The difference stabilizes.
Same discussions we have had here in the past, where the Rybka fans stubbornly repeated for long time the same claims for Rybka 4 being much better than Houdini at LTC. After Houdini 1.5a winning the TCEC matches in a clear way and the rise of Komodo and the rumour over Rybka, these unproven claims finally became less heard.
The same counts for the claim for Stockfish being a program that also would scale better, can clearly not been found in the current results against all of his opponents. The only true thing that can be said is that Komodo doesn’t scale that good at bullet/blitz. Having said that, nevertheless, I would like to see and buy Komodo 5 MP because Komodo is a very good allround positionally playing program.
Lets see if Komodo can strike back again

grts Bram