Author: Marc van Hal
Date: 09:00:37 06/12/02
Go up one level in this thread
On June 11, 2002 at 12:36:41, Christophe Theron wrote:
>On June 11, 2002 at 01:42:10, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On June 10, 2002 at 22:29:44, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>
>>>On June 10, 2002 at 15:28:14, Rajen Gupta wrote:
>>>
>>>>i have read somewhere (i think it was hinted in one of the interviews which
>>>>frank morsch gave to one of the indian newspapers)that at any given time, there
>>>>are several different versions of fritz being developed:- the inference being
>>>>that and the one that is actually released is not necessarily the strongest one;
>>>>its the one that is just strong enough.
>>>>
>>>>frank morsch apparently has one ready whenever a new upstart arrives on the
>>>>scene.i wont be surprised if there is no new fritz till something overtakes the
>>>>current version.
>>>>
>>>>rajen
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>It does not make sense.
>>>
>>>Look at the small margin between Fritz and the program just behind it (Tiger) on
>>>the SSDF.
>>>
>>>Why would Frans take the risk of publishing an engine that might fail to achieve
>>>the first place on the SSDF if he has something better?
>>
>>Maybe he does not know which engine is the best.
>>
>>The only way to be sure that engine A is better than engine B is by games.
>>You can always have other tests in order to guess but they are only an estimate.
>>
>>I know that you say that you do not use games against other opponents but I
>>think that it is a mistake.
>>
>>The fact that you probably have some test that usually gives
>>the same results as games is a good reason to use that test for testing one
>>change but when you decide to release a new version the only way to be sure that
>>it is better is by a lot of games(unless the change is only doing tiger faster).
>>
>>Uri
>
>
>
>In order to have a top chess program you must have a method to decide if a
>change is an improvement or not. One of the requirements of this method is that
>you must be able to get a result in a short period of time (preferably less than
>4 days in the most difficult cases).
>
>There are many little changes to test before you get a version significantly
>stronger than your last release.
>
>It is not practical to let people test several versions and decide for you
>because you can't rely on results you have not controlled yourself (there are
>too many possibilities of inconsistencies even in the experiments you set up
>yourself) and because these people would have to play a lot of games under
>equivalent conditions in order to get statistical relevance (which you seldomly
>get, because you cannot ask people to play 500 games in a row).
>
>I cannot believe that a serious chess programmer would use such a lousy
>selection method.
>
>Testers feedback is very valuable to spot problems or lacks in the program's
>knowledge, bugs, and more generally good advices on general directions to work
>on.
>
>Testers feedback is used to get quality data, human advice and creativity, you
>generally cannot use it to get a quantity of statistically relevant data.
>
>The final decision about what is an improvement and what is not must be taken by
>the programmer himself, with a cold, scientifically controlled, objective, test
>method.
>
>
>
> Christophe
Chess is not science yet!
You have some difeculty's from both sides
a) the programmer does not have much chess knowledge.
And he is the one who makes the decisions about the changes.
B)It is treu you perhaps can find the best program settings against other
engines with engine engine matches.
But you can not find the optimized settings for chess in general with this
methode.
Some move ordering will not be used in engine engine matches
While it would be the best move ordering.
So you still don't know how to improve it from the results from the engine
engine match
Compmared with the best move ordering.
I actualy already found out that there are some openings which can be usefull
For testing
of them is my alapin variation which came out of 1e4,c5
2.c3,Nf6
3.e5,Nd5
4.d4,cxd4
5.cxd4,d6
6.Nf3,Nc6
7.Nc3,dxe5
8.dxe5,Nxc3
9.Qxd8,Nxd8
10.bxc3,Bd7
A good position for testing it's endgame knowledge and kingsafety adjustments
Curently GambitTiger for instance freaks out having the black pieces!
There most of the time is not searched by a logical sequense of moves
Noir is there ever shown a good evalution of that position.
Other opening which are good for testing results are Kings indian positions
which includes ofcourse the Kings Indian
But also the Grunfeld the Benoni and it's cousin the Blumfeld counter gambit
In which many times every move is of importance.
(It might be intresting to start engine engine tournaments with one opening.
Like humans already do.
It ofcourse whould be great if you could get the experts of that opening aswell
for such a tournament so this tournament could become intresting for both sides
computers and humans for the cause of theory!
But it also has a double funktion In chess terms this is always a good move! )
And the no's in the openingsbook from back then are not always seen by the
programs as bad.
Just because many sub variations are left out.
So it is even intresting to folow these lines as well for test results
Does the program find the right way to contineu from there?
If someone watches at these games and gives a coments on how it should have
played and why it did not play this move you can get a better idea on what
should be changed.
But you have to have some knowledge on how a chessprogram works
(In methodes like kingsafety, thread of capture, Mobilety, Pins,
Pawnstructure,conrol for the centre, etc.)
I fully understand that this methode is very time consuming but to my point of
vieuw it's the only way to find real improvements.
Regards Marc
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