Author: Antonio Dieguez
Date: 20:01:16 02/18/02
Go up one level in this thread
hello.
thanks for posting this, I didn't read it before. It is very passional.
about the best move, there is always a best move, for the program, otherwise why
it plays a worse move? (i know a best move generally doesn't exist, but the
program always pick one that it chose the best.)
what do you call a plan here? how you think ccs play a best move for a plan
without preprocessing, that it is different from the way others good programs
play a best move?
if the program thinks there are better chances over this or this variation then
they have a higher score.
the game you post is pretty, but can be acomplished in a normal way, "only" :)
scoring well king attack for example. Your comments are so romantic.
a.
>so why penetrating this BEST MOVE definition. make the programs fuzzy.
>
>let them play the best move for the plan.
>
>the observer decides which reality is real.
>
>let the program decide which point of view of chess it believes.
>
>in logic and materialism, or in planning and idealism.
>
>> If that is the definition, it seems that a few changes in eval weights can do
>>the trick... but then defining a paradigm switch due to a few eval weights
>>changes sounds nonsense.
>
>its more than that. but starting with evaluation is ONE.
>
>the idea behind is that there is no BEST move.
>And therefore it makes no sense to search for a best move. but for an idea.
>for a plan.
>
>search does not know if a move is good or not.
>and evalutation function does not know either.
>
>
>its unimportant who is right and who is wrong.
>
>the move is a kind of superposition. and the observer decides.
>how this move will be evaluated.
>
>
>
>> I'd like to know 'the definition'.
>
>chess system tal was IMO the beginning.
>
>others follow.
>
>i see that junior 7 is weaker than junior 6a because amir ban were more
>interested in the new ideas than bringing a stronger junior into the
>competition.
>
>i see that century4 jumps on the train now.
>
>
>and i see that shredder6 has also increased its evaluation influence.
>
>if you want i can produce more games. from other positions.
>
>against any program.
>
>crafty against rebel century 4 Machëide ??
>
>no problem.
>
>which version of crafty do you like to see ??
>which opening position ??
>
>
>best wishes,
>thorsten
>
>
>
>> José C.
>
>The original Chris Whittington article about the new paradigm,
>alice and the mirror world of the looking glass, von manstein
>and tal (as you can see from the hardware and software used in
>this article, its a long time ago...):
>
>Complete Chess System 2 - TAL
>=============================
>
>Classical paradigm
>==================
>When should we expect a major breakthrough in science ?
>When will a lone developer 'step through the looking-glass' ?
>Who will this developer be ?
>
>The answer to the above two questions is of course whenever the old,
>classical programmers say 'we've reached perfection, there is no way to
>improve'; when the old paradigm says 'there is only one way'; when all
>the developers produce roughly equal results.
>
>This is the situation we have today with chess programs. The classical
>paradigm is represented by Fritz3: fast and simple evaluation,
>pre-processing of the position before the search; and all strength, all
>hopes, in the search - nodes per second and search efficiency are the
>buzzwords.
>
>For a classical program, to keep the search fast, the evaluation at each
>node must, of necessity, be brief. This evaluation is usually no more
>than a weighting given for each piece on each square (for example a
>knight might be worth 3.3 pawns on centre squares and 2.9 pawns on edge
>squares) and evaluation of the pawn structure for doubled pawns, passed
>pawns etc.. The classical pre-processing function looks for themes in
>the position and adjusts the square weightings accordingly - for
>example, if a knight is attacking a square next to the king, then
>increase the weighting for all the squares that the queen could
>cooperate with the knight in making a king attack, increase the knight
>weighting to keep it on the original square, increase other cooperating
>piece weightings and so on. There is no doubt that this approach works
>but it cannot be the way forward. Pre-process ing knowledge becomes more
>stupid with increasing search depth, as positions deep in the search
>tree becomes more removed from the assumptions of the original position,
>the square weighting adjustments become more irrelevant (why weight the
>squares for the queen after the cooperating knight has been removed from
>the board ?- but the classical paradigm doesn't understand that !). I
>call this type of search Artificial Stupidity (AS). Since all the
>current programs operate in this way, ELO grading lists and inter-program
>tournaments are no more than a reflection of the partially-sighted
>playing the blind, whose AS algorithm is most efficient, but it is not
>chess.
>
>They don't even know that they don't know
>=========================================
>Classic programs have static knowledge only, dynamic knowledge is beyond
>the fast and simple evaluation function.
>
>Statics:
> - Material
> - Structure
> - Chronic weaknesses
> - and more
>
>Dynamics:
> - Lead in development
> - More active piece placement
> - A specific and cooperative concentration of pieces
> in a certain sector of the board.
> - and more
>
>Static features tend to be stable, they remain with time. Dynamic
>features can be dissipated with time. Static features are easy to
>calculate, classical programs include them. Dynamic features are
>difficult to calculate, they rely on interaction between the pieces,
>'looking-glass' programs will begin to include them. And it is the lack
>of the difficult dynamic feature calculation that marks the classical
>programs with so many bad games and bad moves - the types of games that
>allow GM's to laugh at chess pro grams.
>
>As GM John Nunn says 'the top programs occasionally win games against
>grandmasters, but they habitually lose games against ordinary club
>players, often making the most appalling anti-positional moves in the
>process.' What else does can he expect ? The old classical program
>finds a 24 move deep check thread, gets to the end of the thread, finds
>it is not yet mate, and all it can do is add up the material, evaluate
>the pawn structure and return a score that shows absolutely no concept
>of the position ! To play chess without knowledge of chess is not to
>play chess, strong players will always beat such programs with superior
>knowledge. The classical program play chess as if it were the First
>World War in the trenches, no concept of mobility, no concept of
>cooperation of forces, no concept of knocking the enemy off balance with
>well timed blows; just material and pawn structure - if it plays boring
>chess, that's why - if it blunders against club players, that's why. It
>understands nothing of consequence.
>
>The philosophers of classical search claim that search finds everything
>and knows everything - they give as an example the knight fork: Without
>search the program knows that it is good to capture the queen with the
>knight. With three ply the search knows that it is good to knight fork
>the king and the queen. With five ply the search knows it is good to
>play the knight to a position where it can threaten a fork and so on.
>But the point must surely be that the search only has this knowledge
>within the tree. At the leaf nodes it has no such knowledge. An
>intelligent program can calculate as part of its evaluation function
>whether a knight fork is available; thus the intelligent program has
>this knowledge distributed evenly over the entire search tree. In this
>way intelligence can replace search.
>It is important here to distinguish between combinational knowledge and
>dynamic knowledge. In our example of the knight fork above, the classical
>program only has this 'knowledge' if the situation arises in tactics - the
>classical program only generates this knowledge as part of a combination
>to win the queen. If this win of the queen does not emerge from the
>search, then the knowledge does not exist !
>The situation is perhaps clearer (and more serious) in the case of a king
>attack. If the classical program can find mate or win of material by some
>line attacking the king, in such case it has knowledge of the king
>attack; but if, at the search horizon, it has a strong attack, but not
>yet any material won, or king mated, it does not know this is a good line !
>The 'looking-glass' program can calculate the attack strength FROM ITS
>EVALUATION FUNCTION. So, without actually finding mate or material win, the
>looking-glass program has the dynamic knowledge of the attack.
>The classical program has combinational knowledge only by resolution
>of material within the search horizon. The looking-glass program has dynamic
>knowledge from its evaluation function. The looking-glass program is a
>planner, the classical program is a finder. The looking-glass program is
>pro-active, it makes plans to exploit the position; the classical program
>is re-active, it waits for a mistake by its opponent and then exploits it.
>
>Dynamic knowledge v. Combinational knowledge
>============================================
>
>Oxford Softworks CCS2-v9.0
>White: CCS2 486/33
>Black: Genius2 486/33
>Venue: 1 minute per move
>Comment: 1-0
>
>1. e4 e6
>2. d4 d5 1
>3. Nc3 Nf6 3
>4. Bg5 Be7 5
>5. e5 Nfd7 8
>6. h4 Bxg5
>7. hxg5 { CCS2's opening book ends }
> .... Qxg5
>8. Nf3 Qd8 { Genius2's opening book ends }
>9. Bd3 h6
>10. Qd2 { CCS2's dynamic knowledge - preventing O-O because
> of the threat of Rxh6 }
> .... c5
>11. Nb5 O-O { Catastrophic - any reasonable club player can
> see this move is a disaster, but Genius2 has no
> dynamic knowledge, there is no immediate mate so Genius2
> thinks all is ok ! }
>12. Rxh6 { CCS2 needs only a few seconds thought to find this move }
>
> bR bN bB bQ -- bR bK --
> bP bP -- bN -- bP bP --
> -- -- -- -- bP -- -- wR
> -- wN bP bP wP -- -- --
> -- -- -- wP -- -- -- --
> -- -- -- wB -- wN -- --
> wP wP wP wQ -- wP wP --
> wR -- -- -- wK -- -- --
>
> .... a6 { Incredibly, Genius2 thinks the position is even ! }
>13. Bh7+ Kh8
>14. Rh5 axb5 { Genius2 still thinks this game is drawn ! }
>15. Ke2 { CCS2 finds the killer move .... }
> .... Nf6 { Genius2 begins to see the trouble now ... }
>16. exf6 Qxf6
>17. Rah1 g6
>18. Bxg6+ Kg8
>19. Rh8+ Qxh8
>20. Rxh8+ Kg7
>21. Rh7+ Kxg6
>22. Qh6+ Kf5 { and mate in 2 more moves. Genius2, the classical
> program, soundly defeated by dynamic knowledge.
> CCS2 didn't know its attack would win material or
> deliver mate, it just knew, dynamically, the the
> attack was strong and worth the sacrifice of material. }
>
>This game clearly shows the development and strength of the 'looking-glass'
>paradigm. Genius2, a classical program, seemed to have no idea of what
>was going on. CCS2 had dynamic knowledge of the strength of its attack from
>move 12 on, CCS2 knew from its evaluation function; Genius2 only began to
>see the trouble on move 15, seven half-moves later, Genius2's knowledge
>was combinational, only 'known' when the search found it.
>
>Who will be the developer ?
>===========================
>To answer our third question - 'who will be the developer ?', it is
> necessary to look at the personality of the classical programmers and
> their hangers-on. These programmers are characterised by a failure to
> show their emotions (do they ever smile), fear (just watch them
> operating at tournaments), refusal to discuss how their programs work
> (just try talking to them) , aversion to taking risks. It has always
> surprised me that the 'top' programmers are not good chess players. The
> hangers-on only make a little money, they jealously support their
> chosen proteges, and viciously attack their opponents. The hangers-on
> know little, pretend to know much and are governed by fear and greed.
> Overall the impression is of a static, non-risk taking, hostile, World
> War I environment. The new paradigm will come from an unexpected
> quarter. From a developer with extrovert personality, accustomed to
> taking risks, a developer with chess knowledge, probably someone
> unpopular with the classical paradigm supporters, certainly unpopular
> with the hangers-on and computer chess entourage. This developer will
> have been and certainly will be furiously attacked by the classicists.
>
>
>Search - the lazy programmer's way to avoid evaluating a position.
>==================================================================
>The new paradigm differs from the classical by one simple conceptual switch.
>The classical paradigm makes fast and simple evaluation at each node and
>generates intelligence from the search tree. The classical programmer
>looks for ways to make his search more efficient and his evaluation
>function simpler and faster. The 'looking-glass' paradigm makes slow and
>complex evaluations at each node and prefers to prune the search tree by
>use of this evaluation function. In this model search is to be avoided
>unless absolutely necessary. Thus the search tree is not central to the
>new paradigm, rather the search tree is used to find details overlooked,
>or mistakes made, by the evaluation function. The 'looking-glass'
>paradigm has the components of human thought - detailed, intuitive
>evaluation, with search carried out to ensure that the program is not
>falling into any traps. I estimate that the difference in nodes per
>second between and extreme classical program and a 'looking-glass'
>program will be of the order of 20-30 times, sufficient to give the
>classical program an extra two plies of search (albeit with reduced
>knowledge at the nodes). Thus the increased knowledge of the
>'looking-glass' program has to compensate for this apparently reduced
>search depth. The looking-glass strategy necessitates much programming
>effort, and requires the programmer to have an exceptionally good
>knowledge of chess strategy and tactics. When such a program is first
>being developed it will constantly be outplayed by classical programs,
>for classical programs see everything within their horizon and the newly
>developing 'looking-glass' program cannot yet hope to know sufficient
>tactical and positional themes to compete, but our experience shows that
>once breakthrough (a knowledge o f sufficient chess themes to compensate
>for reduced search depth) occurs the looking-glass program begins to
>consistently outplay the classical programs. Further advantages emerge
>from the high level of chess knowledge in the evaluation function -
>better move selection and move sorting, resulting in more efficient
>search - more possibilities of accurate forward pruning, resulting in
>smaller search trees. With increases in tree size (from faster
>hardware), these advantages are geometric.
>
>B-Search or A-B-Search? - NO! Evaluation based or search based!
>===============================================================
>The classicists maintain the computer chess dichotomy of
>B-search (which I understand means pruning occurs at all levels
>of the tree) or A-B Search (which apparently means that part of the
>search is full width).
>The looking-glass programmer condemns this dichotomy as meaningless.
>The new paradigm makes the issue clear: chess programs either have simple
>evaluation and generate intelligence through search, or have complex
>evaluations and use limited search as a backup to cover oversights
>and mistakes. All chess programs prune in one way or another, but
>looking-glass programs, with complex evaluation, are able to prune more.
>
>Of course, the issue is not so black and white. There is a grey scale
>between the extreme looking-glass (human play style) and extreme
>classical style. At the classical end of the scale the B or A-B dichotomy
>tries to position the program on the scale, but basically classicists
>believe in search. At the looking-glass end of the scale the issue is
>how much does the evaluation function allow us to prune or extend - how
>many risks can we take based on our evaluation function ? Basically
>looking-glass programmers believe in evaluation.
>
>Von Manstein
>============
>If, as is said, chess is war, then there must be lessons to
>be learnt from military history. I have already alluded to the static,
>boring First World War style of the classical programs (and their
>programmers !). The opposite style can be found in several histories,
>Rommel in North Africa, Alexander the Great against Darius, Von Manstein
>in Russia. Alexander, despite being outnumbered many times, concentrated
>the powerful mobile part of his army, attacked the stronger Persians,
>cut through and went straight for Darius himself. The bulk of Darius's
>army was not engaged, but the battle was decisively won - a classic king
>attack. Von Manstein (and Rommel) both understood that the power of the
>outnumbered German army lay in superior staff work, concentration of
>forces, striking blows to knock the enemy off balance. The looking-glass
>chess program must contain knowledge of these dynamic elements; and it
>is only the looking-glass program that has the knowledge and evaluation
>time available to calculate such ephemerals.
>
>Tal function
>============
>To find a chess player who understood the king attack, the
>concentration of forces, the striking of blows to unbalance the
>opponent, one need look no further than Michael Tal, Russian
>grandmaster, and player of such romantic and swashbuckling style that
>his games continue to thrill all lovers of chess. For the developers of
>the Complete Chess System 2 it was an emotional, and unexpected,
>experience to find their program playing, sacrificing, in the style of
>Tal. Opposing programs, well respected, began to fall like dominoes,
>they appeared to have absolutely no understanding of CCS2's style. We
>were almost able to guarantee exciting games against all our opponents.
>
>We believe that the progress we have made with our program, the
>looking-glass algorithm which we have developed gives us the
>justification to call our program the Complete Chess System 2 - TAL.
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