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Subject: Re: Selling Idea to make a chessprogram. Ok.. here it is the answer..

Author: Serge Desmarais

Date: 17:01:05 08/27/98

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On August 26, 1998 at 16:07:58, Alessio Iacovoni wrote:

>>Why don't you just explain your idea here?  If it survives the critiques, you
>>will have gained something of more value than the small sum of money you are
>>seeking, and if your idea has weaknesses, you would learn about them.
>
>Ok. Here it is...
>
>Now, first some facts:
>
>1. When playing against a chessmachine the "human" player adopts certain
>strategies that it feels will make the "machine" loose...
>
>For example:
>
>(a) let it go out of it's opening book in the very first stage of the fight (as
>Kasparov did at least in one game aginst deep blue if i dont remember wrong).
>(b) play closed games
>(c) exchange as many pieces as possible
>(d) play "calm" and "positional"
>(e) attempt an attack on the computer's castled king with a piece sacrifice
>(strange but many programs will fall in for it!!) - opening lines and exposing
>his majesty.
>(f) make positional sacrifices (i.e. "real" ones)
>
>So basically it seems that the way the program is beaten is through positional
>knowledge and a clever use of sacrifices etc etc.. i.e. intelligence..
>
>But you know all of this.. the solution: have 2 engines play the same game:
>
>a tactically strong one i.e. Fritz
>and a positionally "knowledge based one"
>
>The tactical engine would be in control all of the time, but all of the moves
>would be filted by the "positional one" in such a way as to avoid those
>"bluders" which are typical of programs. The filtering could be weighted in
>suych a way as to ovveride the positional engine filtering if a very strong
>tactical combination is found and viceversa. etc etc..


   But if you have several engines in Fritz 5, e.g. Fritz 5.x, HIARCS 6.0 and
the CD-ROM engine, it uses Fritz for tactical calculations, HIARCS for
positionnal play and the CD-ROM tablebase for endings when it applies. Also,
Fritz engine (the main one for tactics) relies on speed and depth for its
strenght. So HOW MUCH would the filtering would cost on speed/depth to the
program. Basically, as I know, you also have 2 different types of chess programs
 : the fast searchers (like Fritz, Ferret, Crafty) and the "knowledge programs"
like MChessPro, HIARCS. The second one have extensive positionnal knowledge that
slows them down and cost them in depth, but the said knowledge compensates.

   Now, your idea is a verbal one. How would you code that "positionnal
knowledge"? WHAT would you encode and how? Not easy to answer. For example the
Bishop's pair. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not or would not make a
difference. HOW would you make the program recognize the difference? On what
criterias? That is the major problem with verbal ideas. You have to put them in
numbers, with variables and probabilities for the program to use it.

Serge Desmarais



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