"Thou shalt not kill"
"Thou shalt not covet"
Yesterday night, improvising on how to improve the sensitivity of my fairly unbalanced 7-8-9 men openings suite to 6-men Syzygy (on a fast SSD), I took a plunge to leave overnight my desktop play games (0.25s/move) from this suite of top 3 engines enabled with 6-men Syzygy, and the same engines without any TBs, in a gauntlet against a much weaker engine, Fruit 2.1 (800 or so ELO points weaker). My idea was that the ELO benefit due to Syzygy-6 will increase, but error margins will also increase, and after the test, I will see if all in all the sensitivity increases (ELO difference over error margins).
Well, when seeing the results in Cutechess-Cli, first I thought I did something wrong with my batch file. Checking and re-checking everything, I came to conclusion that the Syzygy implementation in top 3 engines are well mannered, almost pious.
The result in Cutechess-Cli:
Code: Select all
ELO +/- Games Score Draws
7 Fruit 2.1 -116 6 6000 34% 56%
1 BrainFish NO TB 127 14 1000 67% 55%
2 Komodo 11.2 NO TB 119 14 1000 66% 58%
3 Houdini_602 NO TB 116 14 1000 66% 55%
4 Komodo 11.2 Syzygy-6 113 14 1000 66% 57%
5 BrainFish Syzygy-6 112 14 1000 66% 56%
6 Houdini_602 Syzygy-6 108 14 1000 65% 56%
Finished match
Conclusions:
Engines NO TB are themselves not very cunning in killing the weak. Contempt=0 was set in all 6 TB or NON TB engines.
Engines 6-men Syzygy are simply moral fanatics to perform weaker against Fruit 2.1 than NO TB engines. When top 3 are facing each other as worthy opponents, as we saw earlier, the benefit of 6-men Syzygy is on average about +30 ELO points from this suite. Imagine a cunning, swindling implementation of Syzygy against hapless Fruit. I would think it can gain 100+ ELO points compared to NO TB instead of losing 10 ELO points.