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Sam Trenholme wrote on Mon, Oct 5, 2009 10:23 PM UTC:
One question that I had, after doing all of the research seeing which Capablanca opening setup is the most balanced for White, was whether allowing only four seconds to make 40 moves was enough time for Joker80 to play well enough to give us a good sense of how balanced a given position is.

It is.

I had my computer spend all weekend playing over 1,000 games of the Schoolbook setup giving Joker80 90 seconds to make 40 moves (each side got 90 seconds to make these 40 moves). Here are the win/loss/draw ratio for White when given all this time to make a move:

Win: 48% Loss: 39% draw 13% Total 1002

Compare this to the results we got when we play much faster 40-moves-in-4-seconds games:

Win: 48% Loss: 40% Draw: 13% Total 1006

The numbers are identical, within the +-2% margin of error because we used 1,000 games in our study.

Conclusion: Giving a game different time controls does not appear to affect the Win/Loss/Draw ratio for Joker80.

My next bit of research is whether fine-tuning the opening by hand affects the Win/Loss/Draw ratios. In other words, can we come up with a better opening book than the openings Joker80 comes up with during the game?

It looks like I can. I don't have over 1,000 games for a given opening, but my preliminary findings show that Black has about as many wins as White after 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6 and Black creams White after what I call the “Winther Defense”, 1. f4 c5 (named thusly because Zillions, when using a Capablanca rules file tweaked by Winther to play the opening better, came up with this defense); it looks like the tactical complications after 1. f4 c5 2. Bxc5 Qxf4+ 3. Af3 strongly favor Black.


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