Author: Uri Blass
Date: 10:55:19 04/20/02
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On April 20, 2002 at 13:32:01, Russell Reagan wrote: >On April 20, 2002 at 08:36:39, Mike Hood wrote: > >>After the Smirin vs Shredder match voices became loud saying "Today's computer >>programs may be brilliant at chess tactics, but they are still weak at chess >>strategy". I agree with this statement, except for the word "still". My >>contention is that it is not possible to give computer programs any strategical >>understanding whatsoever. > >Then your contention is wrong. > >>Everything is based on positional evaluation and >>search depth. If the search depth is deep enough, a computer may make a series >>of moves that simulate a strategy, but that's all it is: a simulation; a fake. > >Not really. How do you think a grandmaster forms his strategy? Do you not think >that he looks ahead to some depth, analyzing different lines? A computer does >the same thing. It looks ahead at many lines. The only difference is that >computers look at MANY more lines than a grandmaster does. The GM is better at >pruning off lines that are inferior, so the computer "wastes" a lot of it's >time, but it's really fast so it can afford to look at almost everything. You >say it's a "fake", a simulation. Yes, a computer simulates looking many moves >ahead, but then again so do humans, if you want to get technical. They don't >actually move the pieces on the board, that's illegal. They simulate moving the >pieces on the board in their head. So if computers strategies are "fake", then >so are human's strategies. Humans may think like this: f5 is a good square for the white knight because by getting there it can attack the weak pawn d6. The shortest way to go with the knight to f5 is Nb1-d2-f1-g3-f5 so let extend thess moves. I believe that no program with known source code calculates in that way. My program also does not calculate in that way because I believe that for programs that are not top programs and probably even for top programs there are more important things to work about but I do not think that it is impossible to teach programs to do it. Uri
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