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Subject: Re: The game is on!

Author: Steven Edwards

Date: 03:32:55 03/16/04

Go up one level in this thread


On March 16, 2004 at 04:51:32, Vasik Rajlich wrote:
>On March 16, 2004 at 03:08:06, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>>On March 15, 2004 at 17:23:32, Steven Edwards wrote:
>>>On March 15, 2004 at 16:52:40, martin fierz wrote:
>>>>On March 15, 2004 at 16:38:53, Steven Edwards wrote:
>>>
>>>>>Hmmn.  Maybe I should offer a wager or two here to the doubters.  Like, if I
>>>>>can't get this to work, then I'll stop complaining about the mundane nature of
>>>>>traditional A/B searchers; if I do get it too work, each doubter can send me a
>>>>>new battery for one of my Macintosh notebooks.  (Approx. US$150 each.)
>>>>
>>>>i'll accept the wager, but you have to define "can't get this to work" a bit
>>>>more clearly for me. e.g. IIRC your list had an item "become world champion",
>>>>and i would accept that you had "got it to work" long before that.
>>>>for me, the getting it to work part has to be spelled out as some kind of rating
>>>>level - what do you think? what level would you specify?
>>>
>>>Well, first let's hope our board sponsor won't get upset with a little gambling.
>>>
>>>I posted the primary and secondary goals back last month but can't find the CCC
>>>reference.  So you are welcome to read them again from the entry 2004.02.19 in
>>>my journal:
>>>
>>>http://www.livejournal.com/users/chessnotation/
>>>
>>>Point #8 in the primary goal set (combined with #12) is what I claim to be
>>>sufficient for proof of concept, and I'll make the output public for inspection.
>>
>>Unlike some of the other posters, I'm less skeptical as to what you'll be able
>>to come up with using this approach if you follow it through fully, but I do
>>think that your targeted playing strength (1800 elo) is unreasonably low.  It's
>>acceptable for your program to be weaker than top programs, which are on today's
>>hardware approaching 2700 strength, but not by such a wide difference.  And in
>>it's day, Paradise was able to handle its domain at expert strength.
>>
>>I suggest that your rating target be 2400 elo.  Really.  You can do it.  With
>>regard to a possible bet between you and Martin Fierz, 2200 on today's hardware
>>seems like a fair level.

>I'd be ready to contribute to the "bet", but everything would have to be
>concrete.
>
>#8 is vague - if I wanted, Rybka could be meeting this tonight. #12 - what test
>suite are we talking about? WAC? In addition, you won't be helping your engine
>if the target is testsuite performance - good for testsuites != good for
>positional play.
>
>2400 elo? Shredder & Hiarcs search 300 KNPS @ 3 GHz and play ~2800. Slow them
>down by a factor of 300, log (2) (300) = ~8, 8x50 ELO/speed doubling = 400
>points - so ~2400 @ 1000 NPS. (Actually 50 is probably too low, but still.)
>
>I can join if the goal is 2600 ELO @<1000 NPS. That's proof of concept. In this
>case, I think you could find a few contributors ...

On the test suite data:

I'll claim that #19 is satisfied if Symbolic can solve at least 200 of WAC, 667
of WCSAC, and 667 of BWTC with a mean time limit of 180 seconds per position on
hardware roughly equal to #11 (400 MHz PPC with 256 MByte RAM and 10 GByte
disk).

A few points on the 1800 Elo number in the primary goal set:

1. The only test suite data we have for Paradise is just under a hundred
positions from the first one hundred positions from WAC.  I think its
performance was somewhat under 2000 Elo because of its time limit of forty-five
minutes per move, and that is one reason for the 1800 Elo figure in the primary
goal set.

2. A second reason for the 1800 Elo figure is that I suspect that, unlike the
case with most programs, incremental improvement is going to be strongly
correlated with the chess skill of the improver (me).  I haven't played OTB
chess in some 20 years and I don't think I could do much better than 1800 if I
were to try it today.

3. The third reason for the 1800 number is how I would like to get the rating:
from OTB USCF tournaments.  The human player distribution is such that there
would be a lot more confidence in the target number when the number is within
two sigma of the mean and not four (or more) away.

4. A difficulty here is getting any kind of an OTB rating.  To my knowledge,
there haven't been any "computers allowed" USCF events in my area for a long
time.  There were a good number back in the late 1980s when I deployed my
program Spector, but not today.  My idea here is to get some local TDs to allow
computer entry by helping to sponsor a prize fund, and this might be a budget
breaker.  (Note: this is the reason for the caveat in #18 and #19.)

--------

On the battery: one of my notebooks is a 400 MHz Apple PowerBook G3 2000 Series
and a battery for it can be had from:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Item.cfm?ID=5833

I need a couple of other batteries, all roughly the same price.



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