Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 02:35:21 07/27/98
Go up one level in this thread
On July 26, 1998 at 19:57:24, Don Dailey wrote: >----------- SNIP --------- > >>>That's how I feel about it. In chess it takes two to tango, >>>the computer gets a chance to control the play too. >>> >> >> >>while this is true, the computer has only one "tango" it can dance to. It >>won't self-modify as the games are repeated. It will learn to avoid losing >>openings, but it won't learn to avoid losing "plans." I could show you about >>500 different ways to transpose into a stonewall. Roman ragged hell out of me >>about this until I simply decided to "teach" crafty about the stonewall system >>directly. I've watched him do this to many programs also. And all he has to >>do is to find different transpositions, even if he gives up a tempo or two >>to accomplish it. > >I am glad you are finally comming around to my point of view on this >one. When you say, "even if he gives up a tempo or two to accomplish >it" you are hitting at the heart of the matter. And I don't care >in the slightest if Roman can still beat the hell out of it. The >point I DO CARE about is that Roman feels his best plan against the >computer is to give up a couple tempo's to get a stonewall attack! > >I don't know about you, but if I didn't understand an opening very >well I would be happy to be able to play it a couple tempo's up. >If I was playing a grandmaster who was very likely to beat me in either >case, I would still rather have the extra tempo's, but that's just >me. And I would take some consolation in the fact that my opponent >avoided objectively better lines to get me into this. It wouldn't >matter to me whether he did this out of contempt for my ability >to play that opening or out of respect for my ability to play >the other lines, in either case I still have the advantage of >the extra tempo's. > >- Don However, the problem is, the tempi mean *nothing* for black in that opening, *if* black lets white achieve the "stonewall position". Black has very few options *after* the fact. And if he "fights" *before* the position is set up, white doesn't have to give up much at all. My point with this is that the GM's (and IM's) figure this out after a few games. And book learning doesn't help. And since programs don't learn anything else (except for some primitive "position learning" that doesn't help) they fall into this over and over. Or else you do as I do and try to recognize the pattern and penalize it. But until a program reaches the stage where they can "get burned" a few times, isolate the common "features" and then start avoiding them, a GM has a big advantage. The most common plan on ICC is to try an odd first move or two, just to get a program out of book. Because once you can do that, then you can go "fishing" to find plans to beat it, knowing full well that it won't be paying attention and parry where you "feint"... Any good master will learn how to take advantage of this... hence the famous "trojan horse" opening that killed so very many programs. Ed posted something about getting caught by it himself here a while back.
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