Author: Thorsten Czub
Date: 14:02:06 06/12/98
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On June 12, 1998 at 15:10:17, Don Dailey wrote: >As humans, we talk about tactics and positional play and try to view >them as separate things. But I agree with Mark, that in reality >there is no difference. ??? I am completely crushed by your statements. Although I now understand your , better - our problems here. We live in different worlds. "as human, we talk about tactics and positional play and try to view them as separate things" - this sentence circles in my mind. I find it very funny. If I would go to my chess teacher and tell Wolfgang: He - Wolfgang, as humans we talk ... he would laugh about me. He would say: Thorsten - you have been to long with all these programmers. And I guess he would be right IF I would say something you, and MArk and Uri says. You are all materialist ! And your statements prove this crystal clear. > Really, the only thing that exists in chess >is won positions, drawn positions and lost positions. ?? I would say, if you cannot calculate until the end (from the root) you will have to build superpositions of the 3 degrees too. > A given move >can take you from one kind to another. > >Also, this means there is no such thing as a great move, unless you >consider it to be any move that preserves the win if the position is >a win or preserves the draw if a position is a draw. I suppose we >could loosely define a great move as the fastest win if it exists. But thats the main axiom, IF IT EXISTS. The main axiom is: WE DON'T KNOW if it exists. If we would be able to do so, chess would not be that interested anymore. >We humans muddle the distinction. If my program does an incredibly >deep search and finds a way to improve the position of the knight >as a result, it will be applauded as having great positional ability >when in fact all it has is technique. Sorry, i guess this way computers will never make any progress. You try to rebuild nature by recalculating all chances. I don't think this is ok. Or it would work. The main strength in life does not come from precalculating but from errors, forgetting about facts, and evolutionary recombination. You have to teach your program about chess, not about programming techniques. I know you will disagree. I know you will tell me rebuilding the human way is not the right way. I know. But you are wrong. Computers will not jump to another level of intelligence. In the moment they are less intelligent than a polyph. Even this primitive life-form FORGETS. And this is its main strength. It is the main reason it lives. >I think we need new terminology to express these things that makes >it more clear what is really going on. Saying positional play, and >tactical play is misleading because humans tend to think (incorrectly) >of tactics as material winning, or game winning. What do you want to differenciate when your point of view does not need or is unable to see anything into different things. You call anything tactics, since chess is finite. Point. Thats all you can do. Give him the biggest computer in universe and thats all. What do you want to differenciate ? Your point of view has no range to differenciate ! You believe junior is strong. And Virtual, and Genius. And than you have to say that Genius or junior or virtual were mistaken. And than you say: if they would have thought/considered more time on the right (in your case : WRONG calculated) moves, your program would defend against this trap. This is true. But it would run into the next trap. And you don't have a computer that will defend any trap. So why do you always try to argue this way ? Give me enough time and my program sees it too. Brilliant. This way we don't need to talk about chess anyway. > And they think >of positional play as something not involving wonderful tactics >which is also completely ridiculous in my opinion. This terminology >make people categorize programs as fast and dumb, or slow and smart, >which is very simplistic in my view. In my opinion, being able >to win a queen in 20 moves is great positional play too. In my opinion YOUR categoriation of chess as TACTICS is very stupid. And ridiculous. Your terminology and you method of asking for more time, than your program will see the problem, is ridiculous. You don't have MORE TIME. This is chess. You have to move in 40/120 or 60/60 or even faster and more limited when it comes to 5' blitz. So what ? You don't have infinite time. You have limited time. Now you will say: I need a faster computer than. Aha ! But this will only help you in this position. >It turns out that most of us have programs that can play perfect >chess as a result of the search mechanism (given enough time of >course.) Nonsense. No program I know plays perfect chess. I know no program playing perfect chess, despite the fact it comes to a position where a forced win or a forced mate is the problem. But these situations are very rare. The main problem comes BEFORE the position is lost. Don't you see this ? Ah - I know your answer : for these positions I need a faster computer - or more time. Ok - I will wait until it is 2010 ! >The positional heuristics do not help much here, and that >is why I reluctantly consider the search the heart of each chess >program and the biggest source of their strength. Run any modern >day program on a 8086 without hash tables (which are mainly a search >speed advance) and you will see exactly what I mean. > >- Don don't need this. I have given you 3 examples of very easy and primitive plans against top programs. 2 from a human beeing, 1 by CSTal.
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