Author: Tord Romstad
Date: 06:04:44 12/29/03
Go up one level in this thread
On December 28, 2003 at 22:18:04, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>In my personal opinion: The time of such static tricks has passed. When people
>ran on a 386 and struggled to get 5 ply, extensions && pruning were critical.
>Top programs nowadays get 14 ply. The simple fact of the matter is that
>computers are almost perfect tactically. More depth now is purely for
>positional benefit. Right now I'm trying to _reduce_ my extensions, not add
>more :)
By proceeding in the same direction, you will start adding reductions. :-)
I disagree that computers are almost perfect tactically. In the comp-comp games
I see,
a high percentage of the games are decided by a tactical mistake by one of the
engines.
You may be right that the main importance of more depth is stronger positional
play,
but I don't see this as a reason to avoid using knowledge in the search. By
pruning or
reducing anti-positional moves with no tactical potential, you will search
deeper positionally
*and* tactically.
You also once again make the mistake of believeing that everybody is only
interested
in making their engines play well on super-fast hardware. Programming a chess
engine
that plays well on a fast, modern PC is so easy that it is almost boring. In my
opinion, it
is much more interesting to invent techniques which do not require extreme speed
of
computation in order to work.
>Thorsten and Ed have both said that Rebel plays better with the reductions off.
>The only engine on ICC that uses his reductions is Chompster, and I've seen
>chompster make errors on a 10 ply search that Zappa catches with a 6 ply search.
When you start a sentence with "The only engine on ICC that uses ...", the
statement will
almost always be wrong, no matter how you complete it. Gothmog ("GothmogX" on
ICC)
doesn't use exactly the same reductions as Rebel, but it does many similar and
often more
aggressive reductions (for instance, I have no upper limit for the number of
reductions in a
single path). I'm sure you'll be able to find positions where Gothmog makes
errors in a 10
ply search which Zappa catches with a 6 ply search, but I also think it is
possible to find
positions where the opposite happens.
Tord
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.