Author: Don Dailey
Date: 13:02:53 01/13/98
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On January 13, 1998 at 13:07:17, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >On January 13, 1998 at 12:57:43, Stuart Cracraft wrote: > >>Years ago I remember reading something where Dan and Kathe Spracklen >>(remember them?) said that the addition of the square-of-the-pawn >>rule-of-thumb to their program increased is strength significantly. >>(I think they said a whole USCF class!) > >I had heard this as well. I don't agree, but there are two possible >explanations: > >1) It matters more for programs on very slow hardware, possible >especially against humans. > >2) They were wrong then as well as now. > >I don't care which, but I think they are clearly wrong now. > >If you add or subtract this knowledge you will notice little difference. > I think I have it in my program now, but I had it out of my program for >like 6 months and nothing bad happened that I noticed. You might lose a >game now and then, but that's not a whole class. > >You sure won't go from 2400 to 2600 if you add this. > >There are a few bits of chess programming lore that nobody questions, >and this is one of them. > >bruce Absolutely. This definitely fits into the class of algorithms that you MUST have in your program but don't expect to see a huge improvement. Another example: Simple endgame knowledge like minor piece vs king is a draw. This is a "must have" but will not show up that often. In real terms its probably less than 5 or 10 rating points to have this one thing and yet no master would lack this knowledge. Square of pawn probably is a measurable improvement but I also agree it is not nearly a full class or even half a class. But what does make a huge difference is the accumulation of several of these things. If you don't have these 2 things (square of pawn and minor piece vs king) along with 10 other "minor" little things like this you will start to notice a big difference. Suddenly one of these missing terms will become an issue in a high percentage of games. And sometimes this will decide a game or half point against you. - Don The reason such an obviously good algorithm like square of pawn is not as big a win as you might intuitively think is that
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