The importance of "Dynamism" in Komodo

[cma6]

LK:
This looks like a big reversal on your part as regards default Dynamism. Your original preliminary suggestion for Dynamism for deep analysis (or at very long tc) was "80".
Are you now suggesting "110" instead of "80"?
Thanks,
CMA

[lkaufman]

LK:
This looks like a big reversal on your part as regards default Dynamism. Your original preliminary suggestion for Dynamism for deep analysis (or at very long tc) was "80".
Are you now suggesting "110" instead of "80"?
Thanks,
CMA

I'm saying that 80 produces more realistic evals and might be better for preparation for human games, but 110 produces better results in engine vs engine games. It seems that an unrealistic eval helps in engine vs engine play. We can speculate as to why this is so, but it's pretty clear to me that it is a real phenomenon, not a statistical fluke.

[lkaufman]

Question related to Komodo's time usage heuristics.

Do ponder make experimenting with "Time Usage" parameter more appealing? assuming two computer face each others.

I was thinking about threshold range of -3 to +3 depening on advice.

Ponder might compensate for mild time usage adjustment, that was my idea.

We compensate for ponder, so there is no particular reason to think that Time Usage should be different for Ponder on games than for Ponder off, although of course our compensation may be wrong either in general or against specific opponents. It is also possible that the proper setting depends on the time control. These are all possible, but I think that experimenting with Dynamism and/or King Safety is more likely to bear fruit.

[shrapnel]

It seems that an unrealistic eval helps in engine vs engine play. We can speculate as to why this is so, but it's pretty clear to me that it is a real phenomenon, not a statistical fluke.

+1.
This is indeed very much so, illogical as it may seem.
I suppose this is why Chess is called both an Art and a Science.
Everything about it cannot be explained in terms of hard, cold Logic.
Sometimes, setting more aggressive settings gives better results against even strong Engines, though the aggressive settings may not be ideally the best.
Maybe this is where the "Art" part of Chess comes in ; like in War, sometimes Attack is the best Defense !

[leavenfish]

Whatever you do for Komodo 10 - PLEASE keep this feature! One might be good for 'ratings' against other programs, but most everyone else uses the engine for their own personal evaluations of positions for items like their own personal opening repertoire.

[Hurnavich]

+1

[Leto]

I was curious what does this mean:

The other new option, "Dynamism", gives the user full control over the style of Komodo; a low setting makes it prioritize static advantages like material and pawn structure, while a high setting prioritizes short-term ("dynamic") advantages like mobility and threats to the king. Although the default (100) is believed to be best for actual play, a lower value around 80 seems to produce more realistic evaluations in most positions so may be better for opening analysis.

I decided to use testsuites of different character to check for this setting. STS 1-15 - mostly positional in character, and Arasan 18 - mostly tactical.

STS: 5s/move

Code: Select all

Dynamism  Solved

 80        1346            
100        1367    ------
120        1341

The optimum is at the value of Dynamism 100.

Arasan: 5s/move

Code: Select all

Dynamism  Solved
100         126
140         155  
180         159
190         174    ------
200         171

The optimum is the value of Dynamism 190. The improvement compared to the default number of solved positions is huge, in fact we will see that combined with "King Safety", "Dynamism = 190" makes a tactical monster of Komodo.

So, in tactical problems, high values of Dynamism are favored. Maybe Larry's value of 80 is applicable to very quiet, positional problems?

Then, I also tested several hard tactical suites, and it is possible that Komodo 9.42 Dynamism=190; King Safety=160 (or similar values, try them) is the new King of tactics, maybe at least on a par with Houdini 4 Tactical, way above SF Matefinder. The testsuites were Arasan 18, HardTalkchess2015, DieRybka with about 5s/move.

Komodo D 190 KS 160 beats Houdini 4 Tactical in new Arasan 19 beta suite:
5s/move, 4 cores:
K: 178/250
H: 172/250

My impression is that by varying "Dynamism" from say 60 to 190, Komodo became both the strongest positional engine and the strongest tactical engine. Great feature!

I tested your settings with 12 cores with the Arasan 18 test suite and at 30s limit it seems with more time to think this setting can't keep up with Houdini 4 Tactical.

With your settings at 30 seconds limit and 12 cores I got 208/250 83.2%, this is just slightly better than Komodo 9.3 (202/250 80.7%, but significantly better than Komodo 9.42 (186/250 74.4%).

Houdini 4 Tactical still has the highest score in my testing with Arasan 18 testsuite at the 30s limit, with 240/250 (96%).