Questions about the ajustable ELO strenght of HIARCS

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Plozikou
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Questions about the ajustable ELO strenght of HIARCS

Post by Plozikou »

Hello, I have some questions about the ajustable ELO strenght of HIARCS:

1) I would like to know on which criteria the chess engine HIARCS is based to adjust his ELO strenght (from 1250 to upper level);
2) Does the ELO evaluation look like the reality?
3) Is this an EU or the USA ELO?
4) Finally, in the evaluation version of HIARC, is it possible to adjust the playing strength to the minimum of 1250 ELO?

Thank you very much! :D

Sorry for my weak English… :(
Collectionneur de Boris et d'ordinateurs d'échecs à clavier. Boris and keyboard chess computer collector.
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Mark Uniacke
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Post by Mark Uniacke »

It depends on which product you are talking about PC, Mac or Palm.

On the Palm I made particular effort to tune the levels to make human like mistakes on the set elo levels. I then arranged for many of the set elo levels to play each other in a huge round robin totally about 20,000 games. The results then allowed me to select the appropriate levels and were then benchmarked against various humans to get a further calibration.

On the PC and Mac I did not go to this extent and chose a more limited approach based on time and depth which gives an approximation in Elo. This is closer to the European ratings but they are not as accurate as the Palm ones.

This is an area I am still looking at for a future release in order to make these levels feel more real especially on the PC/Mac. On the Palm I will look at a more sliding scale of set Elo levels as the current ones are set in 50 Elo steps.

To answer your final question on the PC/Mac the set elo ranges from 1250 Elo to 2800++ depending on your hardware. On the Palm they are from 700 Elo to 2000 Elo in 50 Elo steps. Of course without the enforced limited playing strength the top end is much stronger especially on ARM based Palms where it has beaten a number of strong GMs. :D
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Re: Questions about the ajustable ELO strenght of HIARCS

Post by pgeorges »

Plozikou wrote:Hello, I have some questions about the ajustable ELO strenght of HIARCS:

3) Is this an EU or the USA ELO?
For months I played a game against Palm Hiarcs every day, allowing me between 60 to 90 minutes of thinking. From monday to sunday, I increase the Elo of Hiarcs by 100 or 50 points (this leads to a good training schedule for me). I would then say that the Elo played by Hiarcs in that particular situation is overestimated by around 100 points (EU Elo).
But here is the difficulty : you ask an engine to play at Elo = 1800, but we don't tell under which time control !

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Post by pwwaring »

Mark Uniacke wrote:On the Palm I made particular effort to tune the levels to make human like mistakes on the set elo levels. I then arranged for many of the set elo levels to play each other in a huge round robin totally about 20,000 games. The results then allowed me to select the appropriate levels and were then benchmarked against various humans to get a further calibration.

...

This is an area I am still looking at for a future release in order to make these levels feel more real especially on the PC/Mac. On the Palm I will look at a more sliding scale of set Elo levels as the current ones are set in 50 Elo steps.
Aside from the fact that HIARC is a great analysis tool, your implementation of the adjustable elo settings is one of my favorite features. Anything you can do to continue to make it an even better sparring partner for us chess mortals is great - I wish more engine authors would pay more attention to this. The work you've done on the Palm side shows - I prefer playing training games against it to almost anything I've found on the PC.

Thanks!

Pete
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Re: Questions about the ajustable ELO strenght of HIARCS

Post by Mark Uniacke »

pgeorges wrote:
Plozikou wrote:Hello, I have some questions about the ajustable ELO strenght of HIARCS:

3) Is this an EU or the USA ELO?
For months I played a game against Palm Hiarcs every day, allowing me between 60 to 90 minutes of thinking. From monday to sunday, I increase the Elo of Hiarcs by 100 or 50 points (this leads to a good training schedule for me). I would then say that the Elo played by Hiarcs in that particular situation is overestimated by around 100 points (EU Elo).
But here is the difficulty : you ask an engine to play at Elo = 1800, but we don't tell under which time control !

Pascal
Palm Hiarcs does take the time control into account when it plays on these set elo levels so its play improves with longer time controls.

You may be fooled becuase it moves quickly on ARM based palms, but this was deliberate to save battery power which is important on mobile devices. In a future release I will take this energy saver mode to a new level.
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Mark Uniacke
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Post by Mark Uniacke »

pwwaring wrote:
Mark Uniacke wrote:On the Palm I made particular effort to tune the levels to make human like mistakes on the set elo levels. I then arranged for many of the set elo levels to play each other in a huge round robin totally about 20,000 games. The results then allowed me to select the appropriate levels and were then benchmarked against various humans to get a further calibration.

...

This is an area I am still looking at for a future release in order to make these levels feel more real especially on the PC/Mac. On the Palm I will look at a more sliding scale of set Elo levels as the current ones are set in 50 Elo steps.
Aside from the fact that HIARC is a great analysis tool, your implementation of the adjustable elo settings is one of my favorite features. Anything you can do to continue to make it an even better sparring partner for us chess mortals is great - I wish more engine authors would pay more attention to this. The work you've done on the Palm side shows - I prefer playing training games against it to almost anything I've found on the PC.

Thanks!

Pete
Thanks Pete, yes I have had a lot of compliments from customers that it is the most realistic levels to play against because although it makes mistakes on the lower elo settings they are realistic ones not the obvious dropping of a piece like some PC programs do.

I am improving this for the next release also so the levels are extended.
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