The Crafty-Rebel NPS challenge
A 10 game time handicap match between Crafty and Rebel.
The details
All games are played on Pentium PRO 200 Mhz machines with the Auto Player software AUTO232 of Christian Donninger. The matches are fully automatic, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week due to the AUTO232 software.
All games with both programs are played with Permanent Brain is OFF. It would be not fair to Crafty that Rebel can think for 6 to 10 hours in Crafty's time which would influence the initial goal of the challenge too much.
In order to compensate the time loss of the Permanent Brain the games will be not played on the usual 3:00 average time per move but on 4:30 average time per move for Rebel8 and 100 x 4:30 = 7 hours and 30 minutes average time per move for Crafty.
This in practice means that one may expect that during one day only 3 moves will be played and based on an average game length of 60 moves one game will take 18-20 days to finalize.
Also we have arranged a special rule concerning the opening book. A new started game will be terminated if the computer score of Rebel OR Crafty's first move out of the book is outside the window of one pawn (-1.00 or +1.00)
This is done to prevent that the opening book of both programs will play a too important role in the 10 game match since the challenge is about chess engine and not about book knowledge.
Also in case of obvious doubts concerning an openings line while being in the window of one pawn an independent arbiter and good chess player will decide if the game will be terminated or continued. His word will be final.
Remaining remarks
