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Subject: Re: Algorithms vs. knowledge - What to do next? [correction]

Author: Robert Henry Durrett

Date: 13:14:07 06/04/02

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On June 04, 2002 at 16:02:52, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On June 04, 2002 at 15:54:35, Robert Henry Durrett wrote:
>[snip]
>>After thinking about what I wrote above, it occurred to me that my questions may
>>appear somewhat dumb.
>>
>>I assume that chess computers, like humans, evaluate positions after each move
>>in a search, in order to obtain the next moves in the tree.  How else would they
>>get the next moves?
>>
>>But your bulletin and others seem to be saying that the position evaluation for
>>the initial position [after a move but before any search] is evaluated much more
>>completely.  Am I reading this right?
>
>If the root node is analyzed to 10 plies depth, it's immediate children are
>analyzed to nine plies, the children of the children are analyzed to 8 plies,
>etc. down to the leaf nodes.  When we get to the leaf nodes, we just look for a
>quiet spot (no more obvious captures, checks or other nasty things that go bump
>in the night) and return that score.  So the farther forward in the tree we go,
>the less deeply the positions are analyzed.

I was thinking about the use [somehow] of chess knowledge to evaluate the root
node, but without using any search to accomplish this evaluation.  This appears
to have been incorrect.  It now looks like you are still relying on examination
of possible lines emminating from the position, in addition to anything else you
may be doing, to evaluate the root node BEFORE selecting the "children."

Is this closer to the truth?

Bob D.

>
>>If so, then maybe the extent of evaluation for later positions occurring DURING
>>the search should be different for different positions, at least sometimes.
>>
>>For example, in human analysis, there sometimes comes a position which is
>>perceived as "critical" in some sense by the human evaluator.  In that case, the
>>human does "a deep think" on that particular position, or at least does a better
>>job at evaluating that position.  I wonder if similar situations occur during
>>the search, at least for some engines.
>>
>>In essence, the question is whether or not the amount of effort expended in
>>evaluating positions might be deliberately different for different positions.
>>
>>I apologize in advance if I am not making myself clear.
>>
>>Bob D.



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