Time Management Suggestion

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billyraybar
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Time Management Suggestion

Post by billyraybar »

I suggest adding an option to allow one to change Hiarcs playing speed. IMHO, Hiarcs too often has superfluous time at end of game (for long time control games, anyhow). I would love to to have the ability to reduce Hiarc's rate of play.
billyraybar
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Post by billyraybar »

I just wanted to add that after seing quite a few long games on Playchess (by my nick and others) I believe there is a serious problem with Hiarcs' 12 time management. It seems it usually occurs when there is a ponder hit. I am currently playing a 6 hour game and Hiarcs took 14 minutes for move one, which I guess is okay. However, after making the move the opponet thought for 9 minutes (while Hiarcs was pondering) and made the move that Hiarcs expected and Hiarcs proceeded to play its reply immediately! No this was not a forced exchange situation or a situation where the difference between PVs was great. This was a quiet positon with at least 3 or 4 moves worth considering. I have seen this exact behaviour quite a bit. I know time management must be tricky, but a feature like the one I suggested in the original post would be nice.
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Dylan Sharp
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Post by Dylan Sharp »

billyraybar wrote:It seems it usually occurs when there is a ponder hit. I am currently playing a 6 hour game and Hiarcs took 14 minutes for move one, which I guess is okay. However, after making the move the opponet thought for 9 minutes (while Hiarcs was pondering) and made the move that Hiarcs expected and Hiarcs proceeded to play its reply immediately! No this was not a forced exchange situation or a situation where the difference between PVs was great.
If Hiarcs thinks that not playing now means spending 20 minutes more in the new position when the chance of something new happening is very low, saving these 20 minutes can be a good thing and Hiarcs is saving this time to be used on the future (Unless Hiarcs's time management is bugged like Rybka.)
Vempele
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Post by Vempele »

I am currently playing a 6 hour game and Hiarcs took 14 minutes for move one, which I guess is okay.
It's a common heuristic to spend more time right out of book.
However, after making the move the opponet thought for 9 minutes (while Hiarcs was pondering) and made the move that Hiarcs expected and Hiarcs proceeded to play its reply immediately!
How much time did Hiarcs have left? 9 minutes looks perfectly normal in a 6-hour game; assuming the game is going to be 60 moves long, you're going to use 6 minutes per move on average.
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fallstalk
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possible explanation

Post by fallstalk »

I played a state tournament once, the games were 6 hours each. Most of my time was spent wondering why my opponent kept leaving the tournament hall... :idea:
billyraybar
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Post by billyraybar »

Well, we can debate about how much time Hiarcs should spend till the cows come home without consensus. The 9 minutes I was talking about was all opponet's time --- zero spent out of Hiarcs' time (ponder hit). A rate of play option would be an easy solution. I have to give Hiarcs a 200% time bonus when playing engine vs engine matches on my computer for Hiarc's time spent on late opening/middle game moves to be where I think it should be. I think time management improvements are needed for all major chess engines. At least with Rybka, I can change the rate of play with a setting. BTW ..with setting Rybka's rate of play to ultraslow I have never experienced a time loss. IMHO, it is more important to conserve time in short blitz games. There isn't a great advantage in having 2hrs left endgame position vs 1hr, usually. (especiallly with tablebases helping with search). Anyhow, of course this is all just my opinion. Rate of play setting is what I really really want
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