Time control
We are doing our testing in three time controls: 40/40, 40/12 and 40/4, as measured on Athlon X2 4600+ machine. If you have different machine (actually even if you have the same machine) you need to benchmark it and adjust the time control according to the results. We use Crafty 19.17 BH as a benchmark to determine the equivalent time control for particular machine.
Crafty 19.17 BH benchmark can be downloaded
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Log in or register now.. (Version 19.17, Brian Hoffman compile, 32-bit, single-CPU). Please note that we should use the same version and compile because different versions may be slightly faster or slower and will give different benchmark time.
How to test: Reboot a machine (not required but preferrable), extract Crafty executable into a separate folder, make sure there are no other files in that folder, run crafty, type 'bench' <enter>, wait a while (don't use computer in that time), when the benchmark ends type 'quit' <enter> (to quit the Crafty). You will then see a new file "log.001" in the Crafty folder. Open that file and find a line "Total elapsed time: 96" near the end. (Your time may be different of course).
Time control for your machine is then computed based on Crafty 19.17 BH benchmark result as following:
CCRL 40/40: T minutes / 40 moves repeated, where T = 40 * <your elapsed seconds> / 48 =
<your elapsed seconds> / 1.2
CCRL 40/12: T minutes / 40 moves repeated, where T = 40 * <your elapsed seconds> / 160 =
<your elapsed seconds> / 4
CCRL 40/4: T minutes / 40 moves repeated, where T = 40 * <your elapsed seconds> / 480 =
<your elapsed seconds> / 12
Example: Your machine runs Crafty 19.17 BH benchmark in 55 seconds and you want to run long time control games (CCRL 40/40). Compute T as 40 * 55 / 48 = 45.833333, rounding to the nearest integer we get T = 46. So, your time control for CCRL 40/40 is 40 moves in 46 minutes.
Note 1. It is totally your choice which of the three time controls to use. Either one is fine and will be good addition to the database and rating list. Just be sure to check the right coordination page, and submit the games to the appropriate update thread. (Best is to add '4040', '4012' and '404' to the file name to help avoiding the mistake).
Note 2. We use repeated time control. It means the, say, in 40/4 the engines have 4 minutes for the first 40 moves. Then they get another 4 minutes for the next 40 moves, and so on.
Note 3. (About benchmark hardware). Initially we used Athlon 64 3800+ as our standard hardware. In January 2007 we changed to Athlon X2 4600+ to better reflect the fact that we do a lot of multi-CPU testing. Those two platforms have the same Crafty benchmark result. Note that the benchmarking it always 32-bit single-CPU.