Why no thinker talk?

[ArmyBridge]

sure i'll run some more with the active one to make it closer and upload it later

Nice!! I can´t wait to play trough the games, thanks Maksim
Regards

[maxchgr]

thinker51dactivejunior7blitz.pgn - 0.12MB

Thinker 51D (active) - Junior 7
no ponder, Fritz 11 GUI, 5 min

Lance, sorry to say this but the bug is not gone :O I won't even mention the score because there were like 3 or 4 games in there that were lost due to some bug. In two of those bugged games, Thinker goes ra1-b1-a1-b1-etc.. all game till it loses.
Just to confirm, I am using Thinker 51D(active) 32-bit, which in properties is such:
Size: 74.5 KB (72,288 bytes)
Size on disk: 76.0 KB (77,824 bytes)

Additionally, I noticed Thinker lost or drew at least a couple games in there that were either won or drawn due to really poor endgame play - if I was using TB it would have won them.

[Ovyron]

I noticed Thinker lost or drew at least a couple games in there that were either won or drawn due to really poor endgame play

This is very normal, Active Thinker is making moves that would work against a human, and that would be good against him, but they're bad against a computer.

[CThinker]

thinker51dactivejunior7blitz.pgn - 0.12MB

Thinker 51D (active) - Junior 7
no ponder, Fritz 11 GUI, 5 min

Lance, sorry to say this but the bug is not gone :O I won't even mention the score because there were like 3 or 4 games in there that were lost due to some bug. In two of those bugged games, Thinker goes ra1-b1-a1-b1-etc.. all game till it loses.
Just to confirm, I am using Thinker 51D(active) 32-bit, which in properties is such:
Size: 74.5 KB (72,288 bytes)
Size on disk: 76.0 KB (77,824 bytes)

Additionally, I noticed Thinker lost or drew at least a couple games in there that were either won or drawn due to really poor endgame play - if I was using TB it would have won them.

This is really odd.

In game 3, for example, after both Thinker and Junior came out of book moves, Junior took 11 seconds to make move 8. Then, Thinker immediately replied (0 seconds) with a very bad move (giving away the Knight). And from then on, Thinker moved nothing but the rook only (a1b1, b1a1, back and forth), until the end of the game, and all 0 seconds each. Its like, the engine never searched at all!

I have a suspicion that this is an interface issue.

I use ThinkerBoard, Arena and WinBoard for all my tests. I have done countless games on these interfaces, and I have never seen such behavior.

I don't have Junior or Fritz to verify this problem.

So, I have a request from you. Can you please use another interface for your tests? (like, Arena, for example). Also, does the Fritz UI log the communication between the UI and the engine? I want to know what commands are sent by the UI to the Thinker engine.

I maybe able to visit some friends who own a copy of Fritz and do some tests there, but that would have to be next week.

Btw, for those asking for the reason why there is an 'active' and 'passive' version of the evaluation, please look at game 1. In this 'active' mode, the King attacked (!!!), even though the opponent still has a Queen. Older versions of Thinker has had this 'feature'. I just brought it back. Thinker lost this game, of course.

[Graham Banks]

I have a suspicion that this is an interface issue.

I use ThinkerBoard, Arena and WinBoard for all my tests. I have done countless games on these interfaces, and I have never seen such behavior.

I don't have Junior or Fritz to verify this problem.

So, I have a request from you. Can you please use another interface for your tests? (like, Arena, for example). Also, does the Fritz UI log the communication between the UI and the engine? I want to know what commands are sent by the UI to the Thinker engine.

I maybe able to visit some friends who own a copy of Fritz and do some tests there, but that would have to be next week.

I'll keep a close eye on the games I'm running under the Fritz 10 GUI.

[maxchgr]

Lance, I can try using Arena but how will I get Junior 7 (.eng file) to run in Arena?
It could of course be some problem with interfaces since Fritz 11 GUI is not able to run WB engines. I'm using a WB2UCI adaptor. Maybe its because of that, thats another factor too right? Don't know. In the meantime though, I can just take those bad apples out before I show them.

[Tony Thomas]

You cant run Junior 7 under Arena. Then again you have a set of 450 other opponents to chose from.

[maxchgr]

That's true, it's just that Junior 7 was a special request. I generally don't run engine matches on my own computer unless I suspect it's gonna be super-interesting, and I suspected that would be the case in that match and I wasn't wrong

[CThinker]

Lance, I can try using Arena but how will I get Junior 7 (.eng file) to run in Arena?
It could of course be some problem with interfaces since Fritz 11 GUI is not able to run WB engines. I'm using a WB2UCI adaptor. Maybe its because of that, thats another factor too right? Don't know. In the meantime though, I can just take those bad apples out before I show them.

Sorry. I am not familar with Fritz. I did not realize that the Junior engine can only be run in the Fritz UI, and not in Arena.

As I have mentioned, I might be able to visit a person who has a copy of Fritz, and I can test there nextweek.

And btw, if the WB2UCI adapter generates logs, that woul be very useful.

Thanks again for your time.

[CThinker]

That's true, it's just that Junior 7 was a special request. I generally don't run engine matches on my own computer unless I suspect it's gonna be super-interesting, and I suspected that would be the case in that match and I wasn't wrong

Actually, I'm not really interested on what other engine is matched against Thinker. At this point, I just wanted to figure out what the problem is and fix it, since it is quite serious.

It is one thing for an engine not to ponder, but it is really bad if the engine plays as if it has zero knowledge of the game.

Cheers!