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Subject: Re: diminishing returns

Author: GuyHaworth

Date: 06:28:38 01/30/04

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Several self-play experiments have been run with the two sides set to different
plies of 'basic search depth', a concept somewhat open to debate given that one
would not wish to prevent an engine chasing a line to stability if it wanted to.

The most comprehensive experiment was by Ernst Heinz:  his results have been
published in his book and (a later and larger experiment) in papers.


I re-analysed the 'significance' of the results because I believed that the
claim of 'diminishing returns' could be made with more statistical_confidence
than Ernst was attributing to the data.

Ernst' exp went to 12 plies, not 16.  There is a possibility that it is more
meaningful to compare a match of 12-11 games with a match of 10-9 games (i.e. a
whole move different) rather than comparing 12-11 with 11-10 and 11-10 with 10-9
- because of the stm/sntm bias.

From memory, I think the benefit was about 50 ELO (not plies) were ply at the 12
level ... and decreasing.


A related question that I'm pondering at the moment:  how many ELO are lost by
halving the time available to the computer?

g




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