KierenP
Ponder support?
Just wondering if you're planning on implementing ponder? I run all my tournaments with 1 thread + ponder, and it really helps at short time controls like 1m + 1s or 2m + 1s. I noticed that Halogen and for example ChessBrainVB lose quite some performance when going from 1m + 1s to 2m + 1s, compared to the pondering engines. It's like it doesn't have a huge effect at 1m, but at 2m is like some sort of sweet spot and it helps a lot.
You're the second person to ask for pondering (after #289). Originally I had no plans to support pondering but because there seems to be interest from multiple people in it I'll take a closer look to see if I can implement it.
Awesome! According to Ethereal's author Andrew Grant it's very easy to implement, something like "a couple lines of code" lol
Doing matches in eg. CuteChess, other engines may use pondering .. so Halogen should / could profit from this !? I think it's a disadvantage not to implement pondering ..
Pondering is not something used in any major computer chess tournaments I know of and as such I don't believe it is worth the complexity to add it to Halogen.
I understand pondering might make intuitive sense as human chess players think during their opponents time. That being said, for computer chess matches pondering should be avoided. This is because both engines perform better if they can use all CPU cores during their turn, rather than being able to think during their opponent's turn and only getting to use half the CPU cores. While the engines only process for half the time, getting access to twice the cores during their turn outweighs this cost.
I understand what you mean. In my case, my tournaments are ran with ponder ON, and only 1 thread per engine. Yes, I could run the same with ponder off and 2 threads (it would even be more efficient, maybe?) but the point is that I try to test ponder as a feature that could make a difference between engines. After all, there are different approaches (SF and Leela for example do ponder in completely different ways). http://www.cegt.net/ also have 2 ratings lists with ponder on.