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Subject: Re: alpha-beta is silly?

Author: blass uri

Date: 08:22:58 06/02/98

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On June 02, 1998 at 10:04:31, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On June 02, 1998 at 09:05:17, blass uri wrote:
>
>>
>>On June 02, 1998 at 05:03:32, Inmann Werner wrote:
>>
>>>Alpha - Beta is silly?
>>
>>I am sure about it
>>grandmasters are better than computers and do not use the
>>Alpha- Beta
>>It is hard to find a good algoritham
>>and the target should be to find less silly algoritham
>>>
>>>Yesterday, I tried the LCTII Test Suite, position LCTFIN01. I was
>>>amazed, that INMICHESS (my program) needed  depth 9 to solve  the
>>>position. (running pawn)
>>>
>>>
>>>The position: Kc2/Pf2/kc4/Pg4/Pf5/Ph6/pb7/pf7/pg7/ph6
>>>Best Moves: 1.f6  2.gxf6 3.f4 4.b5 5.g5 6.fxg5 7.fxg5 8.hxg5 9.g6
>>>....->Queen
>>
>>I did not understand the position
>>white and black cannot have the same pawn at h6
>>
>>Uri
>
>
>actually, I've been playing chess for 40 years now, and *I* use alpha/
>beta when I play.  IE once I analyze my first candidate, and then start
>on the second candidate I often quit quite quickly when I see something
>bad, without really analyzing to see "how" bad.  So it is not that
>"foreign" a concept to chessplayers, they just don't realize they are
>doing the same thing...

good players do also other things

1)they know they should analyze a move
that they think it leads to an unclear position
(for example if they think to sacrifice material for initiative)

2) if they do not see a forced line
(they have no time to check all the possibilities)
they can use a statistics to decide
if they see in a position  that every line they analyze
leads to their win when they play against themselves
they decide to go to the position.

3)good players see there are moves that should not be analyzed
when in the alpha-beta we analyze every legal move to prove it is not
the
best.

I think that it is very complicated to define exactly what they do
so the target should not be to tell the computer to do what good players
do but to do something better than computers do now to get closer
to what they do.

Uri



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