Evaluations in centipawns and symbols

[Marek Soszynski]

What are the usual conversions into symbols for centipawn evaluations? I remember that +3.00 or greater is +-, but what about +/-, +/=, and = ?

[Andres Valverde]

What are the usual conversions into symbols for centipawn evaluations? I remember that +3.00 or greater is +-, but what about +/-, +/=, and = ?

IIRC i use the following intervals in ECTool :

0-25 cp = (even)
25-50 cp += (white is slightly better)
50-200 cp +- (white is better)
>200 cp ++- (white is winning)

[Marek Soszynski]

What are the usual conversions into symbols for centipawn evaluations? I remember that +3.00 or greater is +-, but what about +/-, +/=, and = ?

IIRC i use the following intervals in ECTool :

0-25 cp = (even)
25-50 cp += (white is slightly better)
50-200 cp +- (white is better)
>200 cp ++- (white is winning)

Interesting. To say that +.50 is +/- or +- seems a very low threshold.

[carldaman]

What are the usual conversions into symbols for centipawn evaluations? I remember that +3.00 or greater is +-, but what about +/-, +/=, and = ?

IIRC i use the following intervals in ECTool :

0-25 cp = (even)
25-50 cp += (white is slightly better)
50-200 cp +- (white is better)
>200 cp ++- (white is winning)

Interesting. To say that +.50 is +/- or +- seems a very low threshold.

Many engines give +/- when above .70, but you need to know your engines...
With Stockfish the eval would have to be well over 1.00 for me to agree with the +/-.

Regards,
CL

[lkaufman]

My recollection is that the Chessbase interfaces use +.25 to +.75 for small advantage, .75 to 1.25 for clear advantage, and 1.25 or more for winning advantage. I think this is about right for engines with "normal" evals (i.e. a knight up is +3 or slightly higher), in which category I include both Houdini 3 (but not earlier Houdinis) and all Komodo versions. The evals of Stockfish (too large) and older Houdinis (too small) were incompatible with the Chessbase scale I think. Of course it's not perfect; sometimes an engine may show +2 or more in a theoretically drawn ending, especially if without tablebases.

[Marek Soszynski]

Can't we look this up somewhere rather than rely on our recollections, or on trial and error? Are the symbol-evaluation equivalents the same for ChessBase, Aquarium and other programs?

I know that Chess Assistant can set thresholds for !! and ?! etc. in automatic analysis, but I don't know know what the defaults are.

[Marek Soszynski]

I found the following defaults in Scid:

Options -> Game Information -> Configure informant values

+- 3.0
+/- 1.5
+/= 0.5

http://scid.sourceforge.net/