stockfish 10 vs. Mephisto III S Glasgow

[Ovyron]

As long as the programs do not plan to win but make moves , that win material or mate, they do not understand chess.

I'm going to go ahead and claim that your Mephisto III plays to win material or mate, and it doesn't make plans either, so it's a bad example of what you mean.

[Raphexon]

"As long as the programs do not plan to win but make moves , that win material or mate, they do not understand chess."
What does this even mean?

So if an engine goes for the mate, it doesn't understand chess because it didn't plan to win?
I hope Mclane realizes that a mate is a win.

[Spliffjiffer]

There is no sense in making these programs 40 Elo better.
They will not play better because they have no clue what they are doing. They are blind.
They mainly win because the opponent is at the time 40 Elo blinder. you only do competition. But not chess.

You could, if you like these wins and Elo increases, do the match without changing the software just by pressing the turbo button on machine A and reducing the speed on the opponent machine. You would get the same Elo increase. But overall it will not play chess on another level.

Lc0 is another paradigm. But only if it helps to make a better chess. You must increase the quality of chess. That will overall increase the strength.

As long as the programs do not plan to win but make moves , that win material or mate, they do not understand chess.

by trying to be objective though [regarding Eigenmann's article from 18. (not 1. ) april 2019 mentioned above] it should be considered that any single position he thematised there is being solved by current SF.dev in 2 or less seconds on an old APU 7870k from 2015 !

[JohnW]

Just an fyi, you can download a lot of the Mephisto engines as uci if you wanted to run them on the same hardware to compare.

http://rebel13.nl/index.html

[F.Huber]

Just an fyi, you can download a lot of the Mephisto engines as uci if you wanted to run them on the same hardware to compare.

http://rebel13.nl/index.html

Or you could also download my CB-Emu program, which emulates more than 200 chess computers (not only Mephisto, but also Fidelity,
Novag, Saitek etc.), and it also includes MessChess for using all these devices as WB or UCI engines (e.g. in Winboard or Arena):
https://fhub.jimdo.com/

[mclane]

As long as the programs do not plan to win but make moves , that win material or mate, they do not understand chess.

I'm going to go ahead and claim that your Mephisto III plays to win material or mate, and it doesn't make plans either, so it's a bad example of what you mean.

Of course mephisto III is an Old Program. But the program is doing only 1-3 NPS and this design decision of the programmer not to make 500-1500 NPS like the competition but instead go for a few selected positions is what I mean.


Yes it makes no plan. But at least it is concentrating on the essence of chess.

At that time the resources in computerchess were limited.
Stockfish would not fit into the memory of mephisto III and it would not be able to beat mephisto III doing the same amount of nodes per second. And it would still be unfair, because mephisto III had only 32 KB rom and only 4 KB RAM and only 6 MHz cpu, While todays Software is MB size on thousands of MHz machine.

You can maybe relate it in a better way if you compare mephisto III with its competitors.
They made arround 500 times more NPS.

This is a huge factor, isn’t it ?

[mclane]

"As long as the programs do not plan to win but make moves , that win material or mate, they do not understand chess."
What does this even mean?

So if an engine goes for the mate, it doesn't understand chess because it didn't plan to win?
I hope Mclane realizes that a mate is a win.

Todays chess engines do not plan a mate nor do they actively play for it,
They mainly find it by chance in the search tree.its not something they planned when they did e4 , d4 or c4 or whatever opening they choose,

Todays chess engines solve test suites. By making a best move.

But a game of chess is not a test suite of positions you have to solve.

[mclane]

There is no sense in making these programs 40 Elo better.
They will not play better because they have no clue what they are doing. They are blind.
They mainly win because the opponent is at the time 40 Elo blinder. you only do competition. But not chess.

You could, if you like these wins and Elo increases, do the match without changing the software just by pressing the turbo button on machine A and reducing the speed on the opponent machine. You would get the same Elo increase. But overall it will not play chess on another level.

Lc0 is another paradigm. But only if it helps to make a better chess. You must increase the quality of chess. That will overall increase the strength.

As long as the programs do not plan to win but make moves , that win material or mate, they do not understand chess.

by trying to be objective though [regarding Eigenmann's article from 18. (not 1. ) april 2019 mentioned above] it should be considered that any single position he thematised there is being solved by current SF.dev in 2 or less seconds on an old APU 7870k from 2015 !

Here we go again: stockfish SOLVES a position, but plays not chess,


You see chess as a KEY move that must be found.

Most positions in chess do not contain key moves,

In those positions you need an idea, a plan, intuition or inspiration.

Of course if you calculate millions of NPS and search 30 plies and more extended, you need no plan, no idea, no inspiration.

You just wait until you find a key move or the opponent blunders.

[Vinvin]

In our time, an average CPU runs Stockfish at 5 Mn/s.
So what's the point to stop Stockfish after 1000 nodes ?

[kasinp]

Just an fyi, you can download a lot of the Mephisto engines as uci if you wanted to run them on the same hardware to compare.

http://rebel13.nl/index.html

Or you could also download my CB-Emu program, which emulates more than 200 chess computers (not only Mephisto, but also Fidelity,
Novag, Saitek etc.), and it also includes MessChess for using all these devices as WB or UCI engines (e.g. in Winboard or Arena):
https://fhub.jimdo.com/

Franz,

I will take this opportunity to thank you for the tremendous job in creating (and maintaining) the invaluable CB-Emu collection.
It has helped me rekindle my love for computer chess and it is sure to be a source of joy for years to come. A true gem of a site!

(any chance we could see one of the Conchess models being emulated one day?)

Regards,
Peter