HAL9000

HAL9000
"It just isn't conceivable that you can design a program strong enough to beat players like me."

February 7, 2016

Sting 6 really not good for playing games?

If you often intend to resist against the bare truth until the moment you face the same result after your own practice, you may be one of the victims of that disorder which usually costs nothing serious but your time and sometimes your money. But who cares?

As time and money is available without limit in the time space we are living, this is not a problem at all and let's keep on being sceptical.

Last week i've been hit by another attack of above mentioned disease and i wanted to disprove that Sting 6 is designed for analysis only. The impossible mission dictated that 6.0 should definitely play stronger than 4.84 which is currently rated 3100+ ELO in Rapidroid.

Even if the author says so, he's just the author and he can't know the facts better than an addicted tester. He just can't...

And a long practice started two weeks ago on one of my RK3188 tablets. Even though there was still a chance to prove that i was right and the author was wrong, i had to stop it a few days ago because the latest version (nasty uncooperative thing!) didn't really want to support me on my hypothesis.

First stage with all versions:



1) Sting SF 4.8.4 : 208 / 300
2) Sting SF6      : 198 / 300
3) Sting SF 4.7   : 194 / 300

4) Sting SF 5     :   0 / 300

It's obvious that Sting 5 (incorrectly reports itself as SF4.7) can't play Fischer clock. It exits all the games.

Second stage with 4.8.4 vs 6:

Games 101 to 200 (TCEC7-051 to 100):

Games 201 to 300 (TCEC7-101 to 150):
Games 301 to 400 (TCEC7-151 to 200):
Games 401 to 500 (TCEC7-201 to 250):

Games 501 to 612 (TCEC7-251 to 306):
















OVERALL SCORE:
Sting SF 4.8.4: 342.5 / 612
Sting SF 6.0  : 269.5 / 612


VERDICT: Sting 4.8.4 stays in Rapidroid and v6 goes to the archives. But hey, if i could play 90,000 more games, i could disprove that. Really...

1112 unnecessary games: HERE

4 comments:

flither said...

Hi all.
Do you know by any chance how can I assign a book to the engine in C4A? The new UCI engine book option is greyed out and I cannot choose any (tried with SF). I tried with and without UseBook option in Settings, no luck...Am I missing something?
I just encountered an application to convert pgn books to polyglot books, wanted to try it badly in engine matches, but can't...
Also I'm not surprised the Sting 6 is not doing well in blitz games, it's just not supposed to. Maybe this version is weaker in blitz games, but probably is better in longer TC's and analysis.

Unknown said...

I didn't try for long time but yes there's a greyed box. I tried with Komodo too and it seea it's own book komodo.bin. However it's not done bu CfA. The book is defined by Komodo itself. Did you try putting a bin book under the engines folder?

flither said...

I tried installing the book as an engine, which just puts .bin in engines folder, also no luck...A bug maybe?

flither said...

Seems just like SF, Gull and couple of other Android compiles can't use own books. Komodo, Critter can use books. I didn't expect SF being unable to do this ;). So it's not a CfA bug, sorry Aart ;)