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Subject: Re: "Easy" Positional Test Suite

Author: Miguel A. Ballicora

Date: 20:53:46 12/27/01

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On December 27, 2001 at 19:08:45, David Rasmussen wrote:

>On December 27, 2001 at 14:13:01, Robert Basham wrote:
>
>>Greetings!
>>Have you seen this link of basis chess test problems with some computor results?
>>
>>It looks very good to me.
>>
>>http://www.multimania.com/albillo/cmain.htm#tests
>>
>>Robert
>
>I know if these tests. They are good, if a little old. But they are really not
>what I was thinking of. For at least two reasons:
>
>1. They are "difficult" tests that tests advanced knowledge
>2. Many of them isn't a test of knowledge so much as search depth.
>
>I want tests that are like this: If the program doesn't make the prefer the
>right move, instantly, you have a problem because it indicated that some basic
>evaluation term is over- or underevaluated. Like the program doesn't prefer some
>move, because it doesnt  understand that two connected passers are strong, or it
>doesn't prefer some move because it doesnt understand that an outpost is strong,
>or that owning an open file is strong etc. Really basic evaluation terms. This
>would test two things:
>
>1. That the program has a certain (more or less basic) evaluation term necesary
>to recognize the advantage of the position obtained by playing the key move
>2. That the evaluation terms are more or less correctly calibrated in relation
>to eachother, since it doesn't prefer some other move because it overevaluates
>some other term or underevaluates the term in question.
>
>That means that the best positions would be ones that had several imbalances,
>that could mislead the program.
>
>What I want is positions where you can say "if your program prefers to double
>the rooks in this position or move the king to safety or something entirely
>different instead of the 'right' move obtaining a strong knight outpost, your
>evaluation terms are miscalibrated".
>
>I know that evaluation is subjective in some sense and that such positions and
>their key moves would always be subjective in this sense. Even so, a testsuite
>of such positions could really get one started on fixing the worst and most
>basic evaluation errors of a program.

I think that you mean a position like this

[D]8/p2kbpp1/1pn4p/4p3/4P3/2N1BP2/PP3KPP/8 b - - bm Bg5

where a program should play Bg5 almost immediately if it knows about
good and bad bishops and control of knight outposts (d4) in this case.
I plan to build a test like this, but I haven't had the time yet.

This position is from Jeremy Silman "Reasess your chess".

Regards,
Miguel





>
>/David



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