Author: Sune Fischer
Date: 02:02:27 04/03/02
Go up one level in this thread
On April 03, 2002 at 02:45:54, Uri Blass wrote: >>> >>>No >>>I do not think that low rated humans have better >>>positional understanding than computers. >>> >>>There are positions that they understand better than computers but there are >>>positions when the computer evaluation function is superior and in most of the >>>positions that practically happen the computer's >>>positional evaluation is better. >>> >>> >>>Humans may overevaluate or underevaluate some advantage when >>>computers often know better to give the right weights >>>for the different factors in the evaluation >> >>Absolutely not. >>If we talk only of a static eval, then it is much harder for a program to >>"understand" when a knight is better than a bishop. >>The problem with programs is they add so many small things together and do not >>understand the critical point of a position, e.g. they don't understand the >>fight over a dominating square, humans know when a passed pawn is strong and >>when it is weak, > >It is not truth and there are cases they think they know only to find later that >they were wrong. > >There were cases when I had a wrong evaluation of the position during a game and >only after I came home to analyze the position with my chess program it could >understand the position better by it's static evaluation and I am clearly better >than 1600. I suspect you are not really talking about static eval the way I do. Did you run you program on a position and let it search only 1 node?? If the computers had as good a static eval as humans, they would surely be completely unbeatable because they only eval() at the leafs where some noise can be accepted. Even the programs that have hundreds of specific cases programmed are very crude in estimating the specific position, when I play blitz with Fritz7 it wants to play c4 in this position: [D]rnbq1rk1/pp3ppp/3bpn2/2pp4/3P1P2/2PBPN2/PP1B2PP/RN1QK2R b KQ - 0 7 however if i play O-O instead of Bd2, fritz wants to play b6 or Qb6. I think it is clear that fritz does not understand that playing c4 will close the queen side, and be much harder for black to use his terrain when there is a blocking pawn on c4, it is a positional error IMO. White obviously never intended to play on the queenside, so the black pawn will protect white. Fritz *understands* the position better when I castle, probably because the eval parameters are calibrated by assuming I would castle. I can even get fritz to advance the a and b pawns, a complete waste of time, but to fritz the pawns are worth more the closer they get to queening. [D]3r1rk1/4nppp/3bp2q/pp1p1b2/2pPnP2/2P1PN2/PP2BNPP/R1B1QRK1 b - - 0 20 Any human here would probably play b4! it is clear that 20...a4 21.a3 will just close the position completely - fritz played a4. That is not a 2700 level player, even a 1400 level player would either not move the pawns until more pieces had been activated on the queenside, or just gone for b4 straight away. Fritz killed me later on the king side, I can't hold the tactics, the best I can do is to get fritz to play 20 nonsense moves, but it always finds a tactical shot. You cannot put every single individual case in an eval, often it is good to block a bishop, but there always will be exceptions. Think of the knowledge a GM has, if we could put all that into the eval, and still run at a good kns, the program would be very strong indeed. > this is all very hard to put in a static eval. Much of this is >>just intuition, if we can't even put that stuff into words, then how are we >>supposed to program it? >>I imagine there must also be great problems in programming what kind of endgames >>that win or lose. This is something you need to know way in advance before going >>into the endgame. > >I agree that programs are relatively weak in understanding endgames that are not >tablebases postions but the main problem in evaluation is evaluating the middle >game and I think that the top programs are often better than humans in >evaluating these positions(I am talking about players of strength 2000 and not >about GM's but you also talked about low rated players in your post). > > Complex pawnstructures can only be approximated in a static >>eval, the GM will have a much more intuative feel about what is drawn and what >>is won. >> >>IMO programs get by with the use a tactics, you never see them sac. > >Not truth. > >There are programs that sacrifice material for positional gain. > >Junior,Gambittiger are 2 names of programs that do it and even more >materialistic programs do it. > >In the israeli league Rebel refused to play a combination that wins a pawn >against a GM because it prefered the positional advantage. > >I do not think that the decision was right but the point is that programs >sacrifice Of cause you can make it so, it is easy go give a higher score for positional gain, but programs do not know when it is correct to sac, you said yourself you disagreed with the program :) -S. >Uri
This page took 0.01 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.