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NICE 1.3
(N)ew (I)nvestigator (C)hess (E)ngines
NICE 1.3 is the successor of the 5 year old NICE 1.2 as documented on the old REBEL website.
With NICE you can easily and by fast computing create reasonable valid rating lists based on a large volume of EPD positions which are analyzed by Stockfish 17 at long time control with MultiPV=4 and the 4 best moves of each position are calculated a bonus, for the best move 10 points and for the remaining 3 moves 0-9 points based on the score difference with the best move.
Part-one - STS
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Example 1 - kind of best of the rest as Stockfish 17 has an unfair advantage.
. ​Result of the famous 1500 STS positions, click on the left picture to enlarge.
. Time control 1000ms (one second) per position.
. Time to create this list 1500 secs x 15 engines is 6 hours and 15 seconds.
. Failed (crashing) engines : Alexandria, Motor and Stormphrax.
Example 2 - Positions are analyzed with lc0-v0.31.2 on a GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER.
. ​Result of the 1500 STS positions, now we can include Stockfish 17.
. Time control 100ms per position.
. Time to create this list 150 secs x 14 engines is 35 minutes.
. Failed engine : Revenge 4.0, plays much too fast at 100ms.
Part-TWO - MORE SERIOUS
The 1500 STS positions are nice but are 1) much too few for a more serious approach to list engines based on strength and 2) the 1500 positions are too simple for nowadays top engines. Hence we recalculated the 78.830 positions from NICE 1.2 with Stockfish 17 at long time control. You will find them in the EPD folder listed as mea-sf17.epd (78.830) and split into parts of 10.000 positions as : mea-sf17-1.epd <> mea-sf17-8.epd Some results -
Example 3 - kind of best of the rest as Stockfish 17 has an unfair advantage.
. ​Result of the full 78.830 positions, click on the left picture to enlarge.
. Time control 1000ms (one second) per position.
. Speed up by NICE splitting the 78.830 positions over 16 cores.
. Check out the old REBEL website how this is done.
Example 4 - Positions are analyzed with lc0-v0.31.2 on a GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER.
. ​Result of the 10.000 positions, now we can include Stockfish 17.
. Time control 1000ms per position.
. Speed up by NICE splitting the 10.000 positions over 16 cores.
. Check out the old REBEL website how this is done.
. The result is not very reliable, while Stockfish 17 rightly tops the difference with number 2 is only 14 elo points.
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How to run
​. After installation run the batch file REBEL.BAT
. It will run 6 REBEL versions starting with the first NNUE version REBEL 14 till the last one REBEL 16.3
. And when finished it will show you the elo progress made during the years, see picture .
. Used EPD : the 1500 STS positions at 100ms time control, used time : 15 minutes.
. Then open REBEL.BAT with a text editor to see how it's done.
. For posting results check the created REBEL.TXT file, or make a screenshot from the created REBEL.html.
. For more technical info check the old REBEL website how things are organized.
Final remark
NICE 1.3 when properly used is an alternative way to lists engines by strength in a reasonable reliable way and is many factors faster than playing games. However it can never replace playing games. See NICE 1.3 as a fun tool.
