Over the past few days I''ve been adding features to a chess engine I''ve developed, and am trying to find a way to get some emperical data to use in a comparision with other Chess programs. Is there a ''standard'' way of measuring nodes/sec in a game tree? Just saying ''Nodes/Sec'' is rather misleading, as so many branches get pruned off due to Alpha/Beta and transposition, etc... By nodes/sec are people really saying ''evaluations/sec''? Are they saying ''boards generated/sec''? What are they measuring?? My second problem has to do with evaluating the integrity of my engine. I''m not the greatest chess player that''s ever lived, so I really can''t rely on my own judgement most of the time. Is there a list of board/best move pairs out there? I could really use some data that will let me say ''if board = A then best move = B''. Getting the computer to ''avoid'' mate in 1 move isn''t much of a test. If this data doesn''t exist, I would be more than happy to collaborate with somebody to make it available. Any feedback would be much appreciated, Will

I''m not talking about an Evaluation Function. I''m concerend with generating performance statistics. What is the common method of measuring nodes/sec?

You can''t play one Chess program against another and consider that a reliable test. For one, each chess program is going to have a different evaluation function, so the right move for two programs could be very different.

What I''m really looking for is a set of "Mate in 6", or "Mate in 10" problems/solutions so that I may independantly test my tree, and make sure my various ''additions'' havn''t caused more harm than good.

Will