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Subject: Re: So which programs beat which, only due to superior chess understanding?

Author: Amir Ban

Date: 01:27:43 05/08/02

Go up one level in this thread


On May 07, 2002 at 14:17:51, Uri Blass wrote:

>On May 07, 2002 at 07:44:16, Amir Ban 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...
>>>
>>>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 believe that the positional evaluation is responsible for most of what people
>>>perceive as the "playing style".
>>>
>>>Now you can strongly disagree, I do not have the absolute truth.
>>>
>>
>>Ok. I think this is wrong. Anyway I'm working for a long time under the
>>assumption that it's the evaluation rather than the search that needs work.
>>
>>The search engine of Junior7 is basically the same as Junior6.
>>
>>Junior5 was the last engine where I did extensive work on the search. Since then
>>in terms of effort it was at least 80% evaluation, no more than 20% search.
>>
>>Amir
>
>I wonder how much of it is testing to find the right weights in your evaluation
>and how much of it is adding new evaluation functions.
>

Hard to say because they belong to completely different mental processes. New
elements are part of a creative process, which is not something that can be
regulated. Adusting and testing is more routine and automatic. There's no reason
why they can't take place at the same time.


>I find that in the endgame there is knowledge in the evaluation that Junior does
>not have when part of the top programs and even part of the amaturs have it.
>
>Here is one example:
>
>Junior7 does not know that the following position is a draw
>

Junior doesn't know about billions of positions that they are draws. I wish I
could reduce the number by just 20%. This particular case doesn't seem very
important.

Amir


>[D]k7/8/8/8/p7/P7/PK3B2/8 w - - 0 1
>
>Uri



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