How many elo do ponder equals to

[Nordlandia]

Engine A ponder while engine B doesn't. Advantage +/- 50 elo. Doubling is worth more. Now the question is if it's likely engine A equalize engine B in fast time formats or who got the upper hand. The effectiveness of ponder is probably higher in shorter time controls than in longer.

Do you put your bet on 4-core PB=on versus 8-core PB=off in 1 minute bullet games?

Hardware is assumed to be equal.

I'm referring to to this old thread.
http://www.talkchess.com/forum3/viewtop ... =7&t=48864

[zullil]

Engine A ponder while engine B doesn't. Advantage +/- 50 elo. Doubling is worth more. Now the question is if it's likely engine A equalize engine B in fast time formats or who got the upper hand. The effectiveness of ponder is probably higher in shorter time controls than in longer.

Do you put your bet on 4-core PB=on versus 8-core PB=off in 1 minute bullet games?

Hardware is assumed to be equal.

I'm referring to to this old thread.
http://www.talkchess.com/forum3/viewtop ... =7&t=48864

If A and B are the same engine, it seems that A's pondering will very often be successful in pre-searching the move eventually made by B. If so, it's roughly like giving A twice the search time that B has. So I'm voting for A.

[syzygy]

Hardware is assumed to be equal.

And I suppose you will be running the engines on separate machines (or the pondering engine will compete for resources with the non-pondering engine when it is the latter's turn).

[Nordlandia]

Hardware is assumed to be equal.

And I suppose you will be running the engines on separate machines (or the pondering engine will compete for resources with the non-pondering engine when it is the latter's turn).

Imagine two machines with same hardware linked together. Same engine on both machines.

[MikeB]

I can actually test this on my 12 core machine - I believe a decisive advantage will got the 8 core on the simple basis everty search counts - whereas pondering will have some wasted searches , maybe not many with like engines , but enough to be the difference maker.

[MikeB]

I can actually test this on my 12 core machine - I believe a decisive advantage will got the 8 core on the simple basis everty search counts - whereas pondering will have some wasted searches , maybe not many with like engines , but enough to be the difference maker.

Will modify the threads to be 6 and 3, same concept, so as not to use more than 12 threads at any onetime.

[MikeB]

I can actually test this on my 12 core machine - I believe a decisive advantage will got the 8 core on the simple basis everty search counts - whereas pondering will have some wasted searches , maybe not many with like engines , but enough to be the difference maker.

Will modify the threads to be 6 and 3, same concept, so as not to use more than 12 threads at any onetime.

Everyone interested can follow along here - this is just a 100 game match using 50 positions.

Initial results:

Code: Select all

100 games were planned
Match started:     06/22/19 : 18:18:34
Target completion: 06/22/19 : 21:38:34

Base: 60 seconds
Increment: 0 seconds
found 1 hosts to use

1 of 100 games completed...
Time control: 60 seconds + 0 seconds
Threads = 12
Hash = 256
Date: 06/22/19 : 18:20:34
rm: pgn.txt: No such file or directory
1 game(s) loaded
Rank Name            Rating   Δ     +    -     #     Σ    Σ%     W    L    D   W%    =%   OppR 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1 McCain-X4-6CPU   3107   0.0    7    7     1    1.0 100.0    1    0    0 100.0   0.0  3093 
   2 McCain-X4-3CPU   3093  13.9    7    7     1    0.0   0.0    0    1    0   0.0   0.0  3107 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 game(s) loaded


2 of 100 games completed...
Time control: 60 seconds + 0 seconds
Threads = 12
Hash = 256
Date: 06/22/19 : 18:22:34
2 game(s) loaded
Rank Name            Rating   Δ     +    -     #     Σ    Σ%     W    L    D   W%    =%   OppR 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1 McCain-X4-6CPU   3106   0.0    6    6     2    1.5  75.0    1    0    1  50.0  50.0  3094 
   2 McCain-X4-3CPU   3094  11.6    6    6     2    0.5  25.0    0    1    1   0.0  50.0  3106 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 game(s) loaded

Results - updated every two minutes:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xlz8d9rt5c1sj ... a.txt?dl=0

PGN Files - also updated every two minutes:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e808r1e9o253i2x/all.txt?dl=0

[MikeB]

Engine A ponder while engine B doesn't. Advantage +/- 50 elo. Doubling is worth more. Now the question is if it's likely engine A equalize engine B in fast time formats or who got the upper hand. The effectiveness of ponder is probably higher in shorter time controls than in longer.

Do you put your bet on 4-core PB=on versus 8-core PB=off in 1 minute bullet games?

Hardware is assumed to be equal.

I'm referring to to this old thread.
http://www.talkchess.com/forum3/viewtop ... =7&t=48864

If A and B are the same engine, it seems that A's pondering will very often be successful in pre-searching the move eventually made by B. If so, it's roughly like giving A twice the search time that B has. So I'm voting for A.

You are forgetting B is using twice as many cores. So A has to ponder CORRECTLY , just to stay even in productive CPU time . Every ponder that was incorrect , was inefficient use of CPU time.

[Nordlandia]

MikeB: how did you let 3-core utilize ponder?

I don't know of GUI that allow one side use ponder and the other not. Like a sort of handicap.

One solution is to disable ponder in the stockfish source code if that is a possible.

[hgm]

WinBoard offers a work-around for this kind of things: the commands 'new' and 'computer', sent at the start of each game, are actually configurable strings on a per-engine basis, through the options /firstInitString and /firstComputerString. You could include commands to switch ponder on or off in those, to overrule any earlier commands for that normally sent by the GUI. I think especially the computre string is sent after anything else, at game start.