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SSDF time control is 40 moves/2 hours followed by 20 moves/each following hour. They generally use the engine's own book, if it has one, but I am not clear what they do for engines like Stockfish that have no official book.

--Jon

There are quite a few examples from correspondence games and computer-computer play. Just one for example: [Event "SSDF-match"] [Site "Sundsvall"] [Date "2020.09.30"] [Round "35"] [White "Komodo 14 x64 1800X"] [Black "Stockfish 12 NNUE x64 1800X"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "A29"] [PlyCount "114"] [EventDa...

I have never been in computer chess to win competitions or top rating lists. I accept that other people have that motivation but it is not what has kept me going all these years. People are still worried that someone will top them because they have some secret sauce, or some borrowed sauce. If you a...

The draw rate in top-level correspondence chess (world championship tournaments for example) is already in the 90% range I think.

What is the function of Features::Side::kFriend? This is defined as:

enum class Side {
kFriend // side to move
};

and it is used as template parameter. But isn't this just a constant, since Side has only one value defined? How is it the "side to move?"

--Jon

I would add that a good reliable testing regimen is essential. That means running actual games and enough of them to get a significant SPRT.

It is pretty well established I think that both search and eval are important. Stockfish is strong because it is especially strong in both areas. But a good eval is very important.

Do not get me wrong. It is a lot of work to write LC0. It is a lot of work to graft NNUE onto SF. It is a lot of work to run a million trials to make a net. It is just that there is no originality in it whatsoever. That is just how neural nets work. The net acts intelligently, but "how" it does it ...

> One typo in line #3, one spurious space : "arasan 21.3" -> "arasan21.3"
Fixed.

Windows Defender is bundled with Windows now. That is probably all you need.