Author: Uri Blass
Date: 23:29:26 05/06/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 06, 2002 at 22:31:28, Christophe Theron wrote: >On May 06, 2002 at 19:45:22, Uri Blass wrote: > >>On May 06, 2002 at 18:06:47, Christophe Theron wrote: >> >>>On May 06, 2002 at 15:34:01, Amir Ban wrote: >>> >>>>On May 05, 2002 at 19:58:09, Christophe Theron wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>>"Knowledge" in the sense of positional evaluation (that's what most people think >>>>>about when they talk about knowledge) makes for 10% of the strength of a chess >>>>>program. >>>>> >>>>>Chess is 90% about tactics (which is a concept close to "search"). >>>>> >>>> >>>>Before strongly disagreeing (as I guess I will), what does this mean ? >>>> >>>>If I freeze my search engine and work only to improve the evaluation, how much >>>>do you expect the total strength to improve ? Is it limited ? >>> >>> >>>I expect the strength of your engine to improve, but not much in regard to the >>>energy invested. Because you are going to focus your efforts on an area that >>>does not have the biggest potential in strength. >>> >>>On the other hand people will love it more and more because it will have a much >>>better playing style. >>> >>>People can forgive gross tactical blunders, but not slight positional mistakes. >>>Go figure... >> >>I think that people are different. >> >>There are people who will prefer the engine that is better in tactics and there >>are a lot of people who are going to prefer the engine that wins without caring >>for the reasons. > > > >That's different when your program plays against a gransmaster in a public place >(or on the Internet). comp-comp games are also interesting for many people. I think that programmers usually care more about comp-comp games and not about comp-human games. I know that some simple ideas about time management that can be productive against humans are not used by most of the programs. One of them is simply to play faster when the opponent is in time trouble. > > > > > > >>>Here I'm talking about current top engines of today, naturally. >>> >>>Building a chess engine with a broken evaluation to demonstrate that a better >>>evaluation could improve it tremendously is not in the spirit of my idea. >>> >>> >>> >>>>I understand that you are saying that it will change the style but overall >>>>strength will not be much changed. >>> >>> >>>I do not know exactly how far we will be able to go with the 10% I attribute to >>>positional evaluation. >>> >>>I'm not saying it counts for nothing and that overall strength will not benefit >>>from research in this area. >>> >>>I believe that the positional evaluation is the part of a chess program >>>responsible for only 10% of the strength, and that the rest is done by the >>>search. >> >>I do not understand like Amir what is the exact meaning of 10%. >> >>I believe that most of the amatuers can earn more rating from improvement in the >>search rules and not from improvement in the evaluation but I also think that >>the ratio is usually not 9:1 and I guess something like 2.5:1(I know that you >>did not say that the ratio is 9:1 but it is a possible way to understand the >>claim that search is responsible for 90% of the strength when evaluation is >>responsible for 10%) > > >:) > >You do not understand the meaning of my 10%, but you suggest that it is another >number? > >So you must understand what I am talking about, somehow... I suggested a possible meaning for the 10% and said that by this meaning it is another number. I did not say that it is your meaning and I see that it is not your meaning. > > > > > >>I guess that it is possible to improve most of the amatuers that are 400-600 elo >>weaker than Junior by average number of 100 elo by doing a lot of work only on >>the evaluation when you can improve them only by average number of 250 elo by >>doing the same amount of work on the search rules without changing the >>evaluation. >> >>The total improvement from working on both things may be bigger than the sum of >>100 and 250 because after improving the evaluation the best search rules may be >>different. > > >I don't think the proportion is measured in elo points. > >My unit for the 90%/10% estimation is subjective. It's something like the amount >of reward for a given programming effort. > >A successful effort in search get a reward 9 times bigger than a succesful >effort in positional evaluation. > >Not to say that work on positional evaluation can be ignored. > >I notice that some chess players tend also to agree that chess is essentially a >matter of search (tactics). I agree and I also think that search is the most important thing to work about. I think also that evaluation and search are connected and another thing to work about is learning from the search to change the evaluation. Humans do not know that fortress positions is a draw by static knowledge but learn from their search to change their evaluation. I think that top programs should also do the same in the future. Uri
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