Saturday 1 February 2014

Shredder Classic 4 in Arena 3.0

I wondered whether it was possible to get the Shredder Classic 4 engine working in Arena 3.0. The engine has a reputation for a human playing style, and should be a good choice of sparring partner, when I get the interface to the Novag Citrine working. I was not all that hopeful, because the Shredder 12 UCI is sold as a premium product. I found c:/ Programs (x86) / ShredderChess / Shredder Classic 4 / EngineClassic4, and successfully loaded it into Arena 3.0. It runs well, and allows an Elo level to be set. It does not, however, use  its own book. I decided to download the free Hiarcs Lite opening book:

http://www.hiarcs.com/chess-opening-book-free.htm

"HIARCS Reference Book Lite ABK format (12Mb) - for use under PC Windows Arena GUIs. An opening book reference including statistics from 62,664 top quality human games up to 2009. Includes human games >= 2550 Elo up to 2009. It excludes correspondence and computer games. Not tuned or intended for computer play - please use HIARCS own engine book for that."

This looks like a good opening book for my sparring partner. I set minimum percentage scores of 50% for White and 40% for black in Arena, which seemed like a good idea, but left the weights unchanged. It is not clear to me how the weighting formula works anyway. There is not a lot of detail in this book, but it is much more comprehensive than the Citrine's book, and I have got Chessbase Online on my iPad. What I do not have is an opening book generated from the games of lessor players!

2 comments:

  1. If i remember correct "perfect" was once opening-book worldchampion
    http://www.sedatcanbaz.com/chess/?page_id=209

    And "reputation" of hiracs human playing style...hmm..who does say something like this these days?? As stronger the engine es more often they play the best move. No "style" allowed anymore.

    Its like the shape of car:, all looking the same because the laws of physics are the same for each car ( cw ) and gas gets more and more expensive ..

    You may run Hiracs and Stockfish against the Strategic Test Suite : https://sites.google.com/site/strategictestsuite/ ? A human like engine would perform in Strategy better than in tactics

    But please tell me your experiences, maybe hiracs can simulate a patzer like us much better than stockfish?

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  2. It is more a question of how they play on a reduced Elo level, or with reduced time. Are the mistakes they make typical of what a human at that level would make?

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