ChessGenius 1.3 v. Chess Tiger 14.6

Chess Tiger 14.6 v. ChessGenius 1.3
TIME CONTROL	N	N-AH	G	G-AH	TOTALS
"N", "N-AH", "G", and "G-AH" refer respectively to the Normal, Normal/Anti-Human, Gambit and Gambit/Anti-Human engine options offered by Chess Tiger.
Tiger was running on a Sony Clié N760C and Genius was running on a Visor Prism. In terms of performance, the machines are almost identical. A benchmark program placed the Clié slightly ahead of the Prism, but the difference is trivial and would not have a marked affect on the outcome of this review.
Game in 5 min.	2.5 - 1.5	2 - 2	1 - 3	3 - 1	8.5 - 7.5
Game in 10 min.	1 - 3	2.5 - 1.5	1.5 - 2.5	2 - 2	7 - 9
Game in 15 min.	3.5 - 0.5	3 - 1	0.5 - 3.5	2 - 2	9 - 7
Game in 30 min.	1 - 3	1.5 - 2.5	3.5 - 0.5	2.5 - 1.5	8.5 - 7.5
Game in 60 min.	2 - 2	2.5 - 1.5	2 - 2	1 - 3	7.5 - 8.5
TOTALS	10 - 10	11.5 - 8.5	8.5 - 11.5	10.5 - 9.5	40.5 - 39.5

Within the past few years, two strong chess playing programs have arrived on the PalmOS scene: ChessGenius (Richard Lang) and Chess Tiger (Christophe Théron).

I know that in the PC world, Chess Tiger is definitely a stronger program than ChessGenius. In the PalmOS world where RAM is low and processor speed is relatively low, the verdict didn't seem as clear to me. In an 80-game shootout between the two, Tiger prevailed by one point, as shown in the table below. But given the claims at the Chess Tiger web site, I would have expected a stronger showing across the board (pardon the pun). The PGN file of these 80 games can be found here. The table below lists Chess Tiger's scores first.

As odd as this seems, I think it's important to note that this is just one program against another program. A more accurate assessment would be games against other programs of varying strength at one set high-strength level. For that reason, I'm glad to have learned recently that the SSDF (Svenska schackdatorföreningen), have added both Chess Tiger and ChessGenius to their top 50 list.

		Rating	+ -	Games	Won	Av. opp.
47	Chess Tiger 14.9 Palm m515 16MB 42MHz	2101	69-74	100	39%	2180
50	ChessGenius 1.5 Palm m515 16MB 42MHz	1870	69-78	100	32%	2003

These results are more in-line with the results from the BT2450 Tactical Analysis which gives Tiger a rating of 2114 and Genius a rating of 1812.

ChessGenius runs the Mephisto Roma engine which, as the Chess Tiger web site FAQ will tell you, is 14+ years old. But that engine was written in assembly language specifically for a Motorola processor with all its features and inherent limitations. It also runs virtually unchanged on a PalmOS device.

Chess Tiger, on the other hand, was written for the present-day Intel processor then rewritten for the Motorola processor. Sure, Tiger uses hash tables, and sure its PC counterpart produces fabulous results on a screaming Intel or Athlon processor. But on a 33MHz processor with limited memory, Tiger isn't really the same. Watching the Tiger engine evaluate an on-going game showed that both the Palm and the PC looked at the same moves around 6-8 ply. But by the time the PC version got to 10 ply or higher, it chose a different move.

Overall, Tiger's Normal engine (with or without the Anti-Human setting enabled) tended to be slightly more draw-ish, drawing 13 of the 40 games it played, while the Gambit engine drew only 8 of its 40 games.

Addendum

Both authors have updated their respective programs since the completion of the 80-game bash. My dilemma now is that I own only one PalmOS machine: a Sony Clié NX60. So I'm unable to pit the two programs together on faster hardware. But now that I have an ARM-based OS5 machine, I may re-run the BT2450 tactical tests to see if there's a noticeable benefit there.

ChessGenius Updates

Starting with version 1.6, ChessGenius now supports high resolution. For the time being, the pieces are only drawn with a four color palette. Simply put: the white pieces are white and the black pieces are black. But it is HiRes and a definite improvement. Better (16-bit) color support for the pieces may come in a reasonable time. Lacking a better place, I will mention here that my first review included more than 20 rated games between Genius and Chessmaster 7000. The result was an unofficial USCF rating of 2188.

Chess Tiger Updates

Mr. Theron has upgraded Tiger to 15.0, with claims of improved tactical ability. It also has a permanent brain feature appropriately called "Turbo Mode". I know it sports a good amount of color customization, but I can't recall if that was available when I first started this review. While it doesn't support HiRes, Tiger's appearance is still appealing and much more flexible than Genius'.