Author: Steven Edwards
Date: 14:06:17 03/28/04
Go up one level in this thread
On March 28, 2004 at 16:18:41, Artem Pyatakov wrote: >I have not posted here in about 3 years, but it's nice to be posting again. My >college years have flown by, and I am now using the amateur program I had >written during the summer of my Freshman year as a basis for my Senior thesis. >Where did the time go?!? Many undergradutes report the same problem. Recent scientific surveys suggest a link between missing time/missing money and the typical undergradute's preoccupation with the pursuit of women and alcohol. I myself would selflessly volunteer for further research into this profound mystery, but I am unable to convince any funding agency to award a grant. >I wanted to get your educated input on the topic I am covering in my thesis, >before I actually get down to writing the actual text of it (I have spent some >pretty large number of hours during the year working on the experimental >results). Disclaimer: The ideas contained below are pretty self-critical of the >field, but please do not take them personally, since I myself have written a >chess program that has all the shortcomings I talk about. I am purposefully >trying to be controversial here, so as to spur debate. Any input at all is very >much appreciated. Criticism is acceptable and often welcomed if it is accurate. >The thesis is titled "Improving Computer Chess through Machine Learning", and >its main idea is to attack one aspect of an interesting gap I noticed between >the field of A.I. and Computer Chess. Specifically, in my opinion, the field of >computer chess has become obsessed with *tricks* (human-generated ideas that >happened to work without a good theoretical justification and cannot be easily >generalized to other games). Because these tricks work really really well, the >field has strayed from research into A.I. techniques. At the same time, any AI >work has to compare itself with chess engine filled with excellent >human-generated tricks, so it seems to perform poorly. >Some examples: >*ordering captures first during move ordering >*check extensions >*futility pruning >*evaluation function (trick-filled, but probably has to stay that way for a >while) In my opinion, you are essentially correct in your assessment of the "bag-of-tricks" approach for traditional A/B searchers. >On the other hand, I think a lot of researchers have been overly ambitious and >have tried to replace Alpha-Beta & tricks with a neural network or some totally >different approach. I think that with the current state of AI tools, these >efforts are bound to fail. A lot of researchers? Other than myself, I don't know of any other workers who are attempting a complete and competitive chess playing program that doesn't tread the oft traveled A/B bag-of-tricks road. Bound to fail? I've been doing programming for thirty-five years and computer chess for for almost thrity, and I don't feel I have enough experience to make such a claim. >In my thesis, I take the middle-road and keep the alpha-beta and general >framework while at the same time trying to get rid of as many tricks in my >original program as I can (while hopefully keeping it competitive). Given the >very limited time, I have focused my efforts on move ordering tricks - such as >the history heuristic, killer heuristic, SEE, etc. Most of these heuristics are >designed to share information found in one part of the tree with the others, >which I think is a great area to tackle, because it can lead to great >improvements in search while at the same time not requiring precise answers. My thought is that the better idea is to use chess knowledge extensively at the start of a search instead of applying the knowledge to a search that threatens to grow out of control. An ounce of prevention is worth 453 grams of cure. >CCC, what do you think of this whole approach? It seems to be worth a try, but ... >Do you want more details? ... more details are needed. >Any comments, questions, ideas? >Any related research or work I have missed? > >To clarify, the Senior Thesis is a significant project but is not anywhere close >to a Ph.D. dissertation, which is why I am not addressing question in >excruciating detail or with great precision. > >Thanks guys, you are the best! Flattery will get you everywhere.
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