Author: Don Dailey
Date: 19:58:52 07/21/98
Go up one level in this thread
On July 21, 1998 at 07:01:20, Amir Ban wrote: >On July 20, 1998 at 21:34:57, Don Dailey wrote: > > >>Although I don't have the same respect for Deep Thought that Bob Hyatt >>does, I still have a lot of respect for it. It has beaten my program >>twice, and both times probably prevented my program from becoming >>world champion. Two games is a small sample to be sure, but common >>sense makes me believe this was no fluke. >> > >I still wonder sometime why you played 14...Kh8? against it in Hong-Kong. In the >opening at least, DB made every effort to lose this game. Didn't you want to win >it ? > > >>I don't think Deep Thought (or Deep Blue) is invincible and you would >>see many wins and draws against it but I have no doubt it would >>still dominate the micro's. Murray estimated his odds of winning >>that championship at about 50/50. He recognized that Deep Blue would >>be a heavy favorite in any single game but that dodging 5 bullets >>is a harder task. I was more optimistic than even they were, >>thinking Deep Thought had about a 70% chance of winning. As it >>turned out they drew a game and lost a game and this put them out >>of it. > >That's exactly what happened to me, in the same tournament. So I figure that I, >too, must have had 70% chance of winning. Right ? > >I've heard these sort of arguments before, and they are nonsense. The same sort >of arguments were used to show that Fritz, who won, had a 10% or so chance of >winning the tournament. If you listen to these arguments carefully, you will be >convinced that this tournament not only does not weaken Deep-Blue's standing as >the best chess computer, but actually reinforces it. > >The thesis behind these arguments is approximately this: Deep-Blue is >self-evidently the strongest, it scored this result in this tournament, so let's >compute the probability for the result. Interestingly enough, the people making >this argument do not seem interested in revising or qualifying their premise >that Deep-Blue is strongest. You would think that holding a tournament is done >precisely with the aim of getting a better estimate of who is stronger and who >is weaker. > >We'll never know if Deep-Blue was unlucky to score only 3.5 points, or lucky to >score so many. The default assumption is that it scored just what it deserved, >and there is no other scientific conclusion of any significance. The >unspectacular quality of its games in this tournament also more or less agrees >with the result. > >Amir You probably didn't understand what I was saying here. I didn't make this guess AFTER the tournament, I made it BEFORE the tournament. Campbell did the same thing and used the same line of reasoning I did. I was mainly surprised because he was estimating the superiority of Deep Blue over the others less than I was, to come up with the 50% number. If you want to say this was foolish speculation, I cannot argue with you, there is not enough data to make a reasonable statement of odds. You are correct to say that based on the results of that tournament you cannot claim a superiority for them, but you are incorrect in your observation that I was saying this. This is the second time you have done the same exact thing to me. I am not very good with words but your english is very good indeed and I didn't think what I said was that ambigious. - Don
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