Shredder Classic's Triple Brain feature. Questions.

[Hagen]

I got Shredder Classic and it comes with this "Triple Brain" feature. This supposedly allows a user to set up to three engines during one game and how exactly does this work? What happens when for instance...I play a game say 10/6...which engine is the one I'm playing against?

Say I put in Stockfish, Komodo and Tornado. Which engine is the one doing the analysis and which move is being made from which engine?

Thanks.

[Uly]

You can only put 2 engines into triple brain, the third engine is Shredder (Triple Brain), who will put those 2 engines to analyze the position simultaneously, and then will decide who is right and make the move.

The way it does it is secret (otherwise all GUIs could implement Triple Brain) but since both engines can only use 50% of the resources, and will be looking at the same positions at the start (redundancy) all you'll get is weaker play.

I haven't yet seen anyone experimenting seriously with this feature, a Rybka 4 + Stockfish 1.8 combo would be interesting to test and see how much they're weakened (or strengthened?!) with Triple Brain.

[Swaminathan]

You can only put 2 engines into triple brain, the third engine is Shredder (Triple Brain), who will put those 2 engines to analyze the position simultaneously, and then will decide who is right and make the move.

The way it does it is secret (otherwise all GUIs could implement Triple Brain) but since both engines can only use 50% of the resources, and will be looking at the same positions at the start (redundancy) all you'll get is weaker play.

I haven't yet seen anyone experimenting seriously with this feature, a Rybka 4 + Stockfish 1.8 combo would be interesting to test and see how much they're weakened (or strengthened?!) with Triple Brain.

Well, Rybka and Stockfish's evaluation scores are way different. I thought Triple Brain decides only based on evaluation scores and nothing else?

Since Rybka's scores are usually less when it's advantageous, Triple brain would take Stockfish's moves as decider for most +ve positions.

When the position is negative, It will take Rybka's moves as decider since Rybka gives less negative evaluation scores than Stockfish.

That could be interesting anyway. I doubt if it could lead to weaker playing strength than Stockfish. I think it would be somewhere in middle between Stockfish and Rybka (and that is assuming Shredder don't count)

[Uly]

That could be interesting anyway. I doubt if it could lead to weaker playing strength than Stockfish.

The problem here is that that would read "I doubt if it could lead to weaker playing strength than Stockfish using 50% of the resources."

When you cut 50% of the resources you lose about 50 elo, so Triple Brain would theoretically score 50 elo below the middle of the engines' elo.

A more interesting implementation would be:

Use engine A (giving it 100% of the resources) while when the score is positive and engine B (at 100%) when the score is negative.

That would theoretically be 50 elo stronger than Triple Brain
(the problem with TB is that resources are split, so that when both engines think for a time and it's played the move of the first engine, all the time used for the second is wasted).

TB would be more useful for engines that are single processor and wouldn't use those resources anyway, playing on a Quad. Komodo comes to mind.

[Lostark]

I doubt if it could lead to weaker playing strength than Stockfish. I think it would be somewhere in middle between Stockfish and Rybka (and that is assuming Shredder don't count)

Is it possible to have a Test suite on these hybrid Triple-Brained combos Swami ?
Would be interesting which combo works better as a team !

Regards and Namaste.
Lostark