Author: Otello Gnaramori
Date: 14:17:40 07/26/01
Go up one level in this thread
On July 26, 2001 at 14:30:02, Kevin Stafford wrote: >>Ok, Joshua. My apologies to you since i didn't read correctly your question. >>BTW Where is the point in getting a "slow searcher" when everybody knows that >>the true power of a chess program is in superior tactics, not certainly in a >>better positional understanding. If I remember well, several tries to optimize >>the positional knowledge disadvantaging the search deepness gave unsatisfactory >>outcomes. >> >>Regards. > >'Everybody' seems to know this besides the chess programmers apparently. This >tactics vs. positional debate is your personal crusade only, so you really >shouldn't make it sound like a commmon understanding. I meant that comps are renown in particular for their tactical skills. A good example of why >you're wrong is fritz 6. It is a slower searcher than fritz 5, but also plays >better chess, due to a more advanced evaluation function that takes into account >more positional factors. Taken to the extreme, your logic would give us an >ultra-fast engine which simply counts material (resulting in highly tactical >play). My point was that experiments with "expert systems" very rich of knowledge but poor of tactics skills, have been already tried but with no success. The problem is, we've seen these engines before, and they lose to slower >engines which understand passed pawns, king safety, rooks on open files, etc. >Extra speed at a certain point has diminishing returns. The >sacrifice-all-knowledge-for-one-extra-ply approach simply doesn't work that >well. > >I'm not saying that purely positional engines are the way to go (fritz 6 is >obviously still one of the fastest engines out there), just that you seem to >misunderstand the fact that the extra speed really doesn't gain you much. An >engine that is twice as fast won't reach anywhere near twice the search depth >because the tree is growing exponentially at each step. > >-Kevin And how can you explain why Deep Blue is still the stronger chess machine in the world: Do you think that it depends from its knowledge or from its pure brute force power of fast calculation ... Regards
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.