On Apr 16, 12:22 pm, "I was better but....." wrote:
"Martin Brown" wrote in message

ups.com...

On Apr 13, 11:07 pm, "I was better but....." wrote:

You're the guy that needs to keep up moron. Fritz 8 is several years old,

It is old enough that there are certainly more powerful engines
around, but it is still a pretty good engine for anyone weaker than a
GM.

That comment has been made over and over again, mostly by weak class players
who continue to miss the point. With your line of reasoning, there is no
need to make any improvements at all! Why invent tablebases? Why improve the
opening book? Why improve your database? Most players still can't beat the
program without the improvements, right?

If they want to play against the engine then they are probably better
off with one that plays a varied and interesting game of chess at
strengths where they can sometimes win. The top flight engines now
make a poor fist of playing down to the level of ordinary club
players.

Tournament chess players who buy fritz don't buy it to play against, if
indeed they ever play against it. They buy it primarily to assist them in
reviewing their games and analyzing particular lines or positions. A
stronger engine makes a big difference in the quality of the analysis. This
is in addition to improvements to the gui and increased functionality. Two
other points you failed to mention.

The main practical advantage for the newer engines is that they are a
bit faster or more thorough at annotating games.

You don't have a clue what you're talking about Martin. Speed has nothing
whatsoever to do with anything. In fact, Rybka 2.3 runs much slower than
even Fritz 8. It is, however, much stronger than anything Chessbase has ever
put out. The increased strength of the engine is reason enough to upgrade.

You are very low grade troll. I know more about computer chess than
you will ever do.

The rate of increase of effective playing strength with elapsed
computation time is what matters.

Shredder and Rybka evaluate many fewer nodes than Fritz but win out
longer term by having more efficient pruning coming in part from a
more sophisticated evaluation function with a better understanding of
positional advantage. Even running them flat out they still sometimes
need guiding by human hand to find the strongest moves. There are some
positions that suit one engine much more than another - only trial and
error will work for them.

And incidentally there are some puzzle type positions that will
effectively break CB engines infinite analysis mode with muliple lines
displayed - grinding them to a virtual standstill in about a minute.

See the previous paragraph. But again you fail to mention, or don't
understand, that there are other things being upgraded in addition to engine
strength.....GUI, Database, Opening Book, Functionality.

Oh yes. Like we all really needed that useless Turk 3D graphics
caricature gimmick?

Shredderbases are the most recent compelling "buy me" innovation that
represents a major enhancement.

I don't consider the newest GUI a step forwards at all. I want a clean
simple way to bind different engine configurations to icons. I do not
need a different desktop icon for every CB engine installed which just
starts the GUI with the most recently used engine in that version. It
really is a mess with multiple engines installed.

(a somewhat risky script that works for doing this was sent to me
privately by a kind individual who posts here)

However, it is still better then Chessmasters GUI which is horribly
cluttered.

Regards,
Martin Brown