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Subject: Re: Junior better understanding of chess than Deep Blue

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:32:52 01/11/03

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On January 11, 2003 at 10:30:44, Frank Phillips wrote:

>On January 11, 2003 at 09:39:41, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On January 11, 2003 at 09:12:20, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On January 11, 2003 at 08:51:18, Frank Phillips wrote:
>>>
>>>>On January 11, 2003 at 08:38:50, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On January 11, 2003 at 08:23:43, Frank Phillips wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>"The next question is, and many people are asking it, do we know how Deep Junior
>>>>>>compares in strength with Deep Blue? The really interesting thing, from the AI
>>>>>>point of view in general and for computer chess researchers in particular, is
>>>>>>that Deep Junior examines something like one percent of the number of positions
>>>>>>per second of Deep Blue. But despite this Deep Junior may well play better chess
>>>>>>because its "understanding" of the game is better. It appears to have more chess
>>>>>>knowledge and understanding in its evaluation function than Deep Blue did, and
>>>>>>this compensates for the difference in positions-per-second.." Extract from
>>>>>>Levy on Chessbase.com site
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>From what I read in Behind Deep Blue I find this surprising.  But then again, I
>>>>>>no nothing about Junior other than it is an awesome program.
>>>>>
>>>>>I think that comparison between the quantity of evaluation is meaningless.
>>>>>The right comparison is comparison of the quality.
>>>>>
>>>>>It is easy to add a lot of knowledge without testing for bugs but the result
>>>>>will be a disaster.
>>>>>
>>>>>It is possible that the program that has more knowledge and understanding simply
>>>>>understands things wrong because of bugs or understand the wrong things.
>>>>>
>>>>>I think that discussion about Deep blue's evaluation is meaningless unless Deep
>>>>>blue team post the source code of their evaluation.
>>>>>
>>>>>people simply are not going to agree.
>>>>>
>>>>>If deeper blue post the source code of their evaluation then it will be possible
>>>>>to compare it by changing the source code of the free programs to have the same
>>>>>evaluation as deeper blue's evaluation and use games with fixed number of nodes
>>>>>per move.
>>>>>
>>>>>Uri
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I agree.  I do not understand therefore how Levy came to his conculsion.
>>>>
>>>>However, if I had to guess I would say that Deep Blue has more knowledge (it was
>>>> free in terms of calculation) and much of it seems to have been tuned by
>>>>Grandmasters.  Hsu talks about Deep Blue going to Joel Benjamins chess school.
>>>>This is not necessarily the same as understanding (strange term), but I know
>>>>where I would put my money.
>>>>
>>>>I find your insistance that only Deep Blue publish their code, biased. It would
>>>>be interesting (although commercial sucide) to compare both evaluation
>>>>approaches against each other and in the way you describe.  Levy offers no data
>>>>to backup his claim.  Deep Blue not demonstrating it is better by publishing its
>>>>code, does not make Junior better.
>>>>
>>>>Frank
>>>
>>>Look to the many idiotic moves Deep Blue played and try all those positions on
>>>Junior.
>>>
>>>Then you'll know enough.
>>>
>>>Easy test nah?
>>>
>>>Levy as an IM knows more than enough from chess to judge the quality of the
>>>moves made by Deep Blue.
>>
>>I also guess that Deep Junior has better evaluation but
>>note that David Levy lost against Deep thought 4-0 in 1989 so I do not think
>>that the fact that he is an IM is a reason to support my opinion.
>>
>>I see nothing productive from another disagreement with Bob Hyatt about the same
>>thing and this is the reason that I prefered not to express an opinion in the
>>first post.
>>
>>I do not see what is the commercial interest of Hsu and IBM in deeper blue's
>>evaluation so I do not see a logical reason for them not to post their
>>evaluation.
>>
>>In the case of Junior there is a clear reason not to give the evaluation of
>>Junior because it is a commercial program.
>>
>>This is the reason that I suggested that deeper blue post their evaluation code
>>including the bugs that they had so we can compare it with today's programs.
>>
>>Uri
>
>Accepted.
>
>
>I was not aware that there had been big progress in 'the static evaluation of
>chess positions' since Deep Blue, but maybe Vincent will post some examples to
>illustrate his point.
>
>Frank


I doubt it.  But his hand-waving will no doubt stir up the equivalent of
a hurricane...

I'm sure there have been _some_ developments since 1997.  But Vincent seems to
assume that because his evaluation was crap, that everyone's eval was crap.
Even though he knows that much of what I do today I did back in 1994.

That includes passed pawns, outside passed pawns, pawn majorities, distant
majorities, weak pawns, etc.  I do a few things today I didn't back then, I
did a few things back then I can't afford to do today on a non-vector machine.
But the approach of "my code was crap so everybody's code was crap" simply
doesn't fly.

I'm waiting for him to agree to a match against a 1997 program on 1997
hardware since he can beat them so easily...

I can supply both the program _and_ the 1997-era hardware.

And another ridiculous statement will simply go down in flames.  Again.
As usual.



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