Author: stuart taylor
Date: 17:24:40 05/07/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 07, 2002 at 13:20:28, Uri Blass wrote: >On May 07, 2002 at 12:53:13, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: > >>On May 06, 2002 at 13:09:45, Christophe Theron wrote: >> >>>On May 06, 2002 at 01:05:23, Uri Blass wrote: >>> >>>>On May 05, 2002 at 19:58:09, Christophe Theron wrote: >>>> >>>>>On May 05, 2002 at 19:25:07, stuart taylor wrote: >>>>> >>>>>>I mean, where are we? I cannot make it out yet. >>>>>>Can we safely say that a top program of today can beat all programs from before >>>>>>1996, i.e. 1995 and below? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>Year of release? >>>>> >>>>>Wrong thinking. >>>>> >>>>>What you need to consider is the number of years the programmer has spent >>>>>actively working on his program. >>>>> >>>>>That gives much better figures. >>>>> >>>>>Genius 5 is a program of 1996, but it represents approximately 15 years of hard >>>>>work by Richard Lang. >>>>> >>>>>Now consider an amateur program of 2002, on which the programmer works since >>>>>1996. >>>>> >>>>>Are you going to compare 1996 and 2002 and decide that the 2002 program is >>>>>probably better? >>>> >>>>The amateur of 2002 has the advantage that the programmer could get more ideas >>>>about programming from reading and also could do better testing thanks to better >>>>hardware and software. >>>> >>>>I can give you one example for the last point and it was about testing to find >>>>bugs in my move generator: >>>> >>>>There are a lot of programs that calculate today the perft function for every >>>>position(perft 6 is the number of legal games of 6 moves from the position) . >>>>They helped to find bugs in my complicated move generator(if I see that perft 5 >>>>is not correct then I can find the bug by finding a position when perft 4 is >>>>wrong,finding a position when perft 3 is wrong...). >>>> >>>>I guess that many years ago there was no free software to calculate that >>>>function and even if there was software to do it the hardware caused it to be >>>>clearly slower so testing and finding bugs was an harder task. >>>> >>>>>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"). >>>> >>>>It is possible that evaluation may be more important but programmers failed to >>>>write the right evaluation to prove it. >>> >>> >>>You are right. >>> >>>I consider that current top chess programs, compared to top human chess players, >>>are at the 50% level in search and 20% in evaluation. >>> >>>I do not even know if it is 50/20, considering that top human ches players, who >>>are thousands of times slower, can equal or dominate the top chess programs >>>running on top hardware. >>> >>>So there is ample room for improving, that's the good news. >>> >>>But I still believe that the proportion in chess is 90% importance for search >>>and 10% for evaluation. >>> >>>There is more room for improvement in evaluation (in percentage relative to the >>>skills of human players), but it still represents a minor part compared to >>>potential improvements in search. >>> >>> >>> >>> Christophe >> >>for chessprograms things are different. Not a single one of them >>misses obvious tricks nowadays. It's book + evaluation dominated simply. > >The main advantage of searching deeper is not obvious tricks. >It can be better positional moves and it can be tricks that are not obvious. > >I think that in most comp-comp games between equal programs if you give the >losers to search 2 plies deeper when the winner search to the same depth that >they searched in the game then you are going to see different results. > >book dominates? >I think that most programmers are going to prefer to play with no book if their >hardware is 3 times faster. > >I think that it includes also christophe but christophe can tell if I am wrong. > >Uri Uri, this is a big Chidush! Do you mean 3 times as fast, or 3 plies deeper? There is quite alot to know in order to made opening decisions without a book. I don't see how x3 hardware speed will be enough for that S.Taylor
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