Author: Alessio Iacovoni
Date: 01:23:19 08/27/98
Go up one level in this thread
On August 26, 1998 at 22:21:51, Don Dailey wrote: >I'm sorry to report that this is not a new idea. Jonathon Schaeffer >used the basic idea in Phoenix, his chess program many years ago. Really!! >But it is still unclear how workable it is. He used the idea because >he felt like it was a better resource allocation decision when using >many processors. But integrating the move choice between both engines >is much more difficult that you might imagine it to be. For instance, >which move do you chose? If the tactical engine >says play move A with an even score, and the positional engine says to >play move B and be up 1.5 pawns which do you choose? No... The way I was thinking it would work would be to have the main engine come up with 3 or 4 valid alternatives. They're passed on to the positional engine which would decide which one to chose from and which ones to discard. >that one of these programs will be stronger, depending on how they >were designed and I would tend to want to choose it's move most or >all the time. Well no.. it's the positional engine that decides what move to actually select. > >Another big problem is how strong do you think you can make a >program positionally? The real art in writing an evaluation >function is choosing the right evaluation features and knowing >how to mix them together and with the correct weights. In my >opinion this is harder to do than just pumping in more and more >knowledge, this very quickly reaches a point of diminishing >returns. > I dont know actually.. but you know.. after all chess theory is not so vast. >A point often missed is that a deep searcher will often play >better moves, both tactically and positionally. Most people Yes.. if it could search as deep as the last move. But this seems logically impossible because if it were really true it would imply that a program could come up with a winning game from move number 1 (which is not possible and will never be). I agree that long term tactics does lead to a strategical plan but I personally believe that the opposite is true. i.e that strategy is long term tactics. >think of these as 2 separate things but they are not. The >search is a magnifying glass for the evaluation function, >if you improve the search, the positional play will also >improve automatically. > That's only partly true.. from seeing many games it seems to me that indeed long term tactics can lead to strategy.. but porbably not to the BEST strategy.. i.e. the one that can always beat any grandmaster. >Can you suggest a scheme for choosing which move you would >play under which circumstance so we can talk about it? > I told you. A good engine would select the 3 best moves and pass them on to the positional engine whcihc would decide which one of the three is better. (or four, or five...) >With Phoenix, the positional program was in control, but >the tactical program could "veto" move choices the positional >program made if it saw that another move won material. > Well no.. the opposite... we now now how ghood a tactical engine can get.. i would give control to it and have the veto part be done by the positional one. >Another problem with your scheme is again, resource allocation. >If you have 2 programs, you cripple both of them unless you >run them on different processors, but you are implying that No. The whole idea behind it is that one processor would be used by one program and another one by another. Plus it would allow for an easy finetuning of the positional program. >this scheme be used for any program. I admit I am pretty >skeptical about your idea but I am willing to discuss it >further if you want to continue. You can start by being >a lot more specific about how you might arrange the move >selection process between 2 programs. You also must >convince me that two different programs can be written where >each one has huge strengths the other lacks, and yet these >cannot in any practical way be combined into one program. Well.. i think it's more logical to separate the two things.. both for optimal allocation of resources and also because in such a way "chess experts" would deal with the positional program, and "computer scientists" with the tactical one, letting everybody do its own job and maximizing specialization. So... i'm broke.. will anybody send me a free chessprogram of theirs that i can play with in my free time? > > >- Don
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