Author: Peter Berger
Date: 13:48:48 02/20/05
Go up one level in this thread
On February 18, 2005 at 05:30:25, Vasik Rajlich wrote: >On February 18, 2005 at 04:25:37, Sune Fischer wrote: > >> >>>>These so called "killer books" are always used by very strong engines on top >>>>hardware. >>>>The killer books seem to work best against weaker engines on weaker hardware. >>>>Now isn't that odd? :) >>> >>>Killer books are in most of the cases for rich people who can pay for book >>>makers so it is not a surprise that they work against engines with weaker >>>hardware that do not have time to prepare. >> >>That could be the reason, but the point is that it won't show a lot because >>these engines are so strong already that they would have won even with a bad >>book. >> >>It would be far more interesting to give Beowulf a 700 Elo book and then go >>wipeout Shredder & co in the big tournaments. :) >> >>>I also do not beliebe in 700 elo but I certainly believe that they can improve >>>the performance by 100-200 elo in a tournament when part of the opponents. >>> >>>If you have statistics of a lot of games that you get 70% against some program >>>with line A and 50% against the same program with line B then choosing line A is >>>important. >>> >>>If you have similar statistics for many programs then it may give you >>>significant increase in performance in tournaments. >> >>I tend to think the effect is mostly psychological. >> >>I can see how comming out of book with a +0.6 score against an equal opponent >>must feel like half a victory, and it's not hard for me to imagine that some >>would call that totally winning :) >> >>>Even with no special preperation against specific opponent you may have >>>statistics that your program score 60% with 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.f3 and only 50% >>>against the same opponents with 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 so of course opening >>>preperation can help significantly in tournament. >> >>I believe such is thing is possible, but increasing your score from 50% to 60% >>is still not much more than 50-100 Elo. >> >>-S. > >I quite agree here. > >The other thing to keep in mind is just what is involved in increasing the score >from 50% to 60%. It means that every fifth game you flat out win in the opening. >Or - every "2.5th" game (ie 40% of games), your position is so great that you'll >score 75% from it. (Or would have equal chances against an engine 200 points >above you.) > >Chess just doesn't work like this. > >Anyway I think this entire debate is psychological. Promoting the value of >hand-crafted books is a way to promote the value of individual tournaments over >long matches/rating lists - and from a sporting/spectating point of view it's >hard to argue with that. Statistical significance is just not that exciting ... > >Vas I agree with your conclusion that this debate is mainly psychological, but not with all your reasons. E.g. are the statistically significant matches really good predictors for actual tournaments? I am often surprised how readily people accept the idea that more games mean more valid results per se. If you look at SSDF results or long matches done in other user tournaments, there should be a huge influence of the book learners, to an extent that maybe they are sometimes more the thing tested than the engines themselves. In other tournaments ( like Nunn matches) the books are eliminated altogether, which again makes them something different. Concerning the great quality of the special (and secret) tournament books, the situation is even worse btw. Except the book authors, who partly worked on them for dozens of years, and thus are strongly involved emotionally, and understandibly so, no one even knows them per definition. I doubt that there is any special book that provides more than 50 points ELO compared to a reasonable book ( tbd later), guesswork of course. But 50 ELOs is nothing to be sneezed at anyway. To the psychological effect - if a game is won ( or lost ) directly out of book, this makes a very strong impression of course. And it happens. Just not so often . And of course one has to take into account the lost points too. Last summer I had a look at a lot of computer games played at official events, with the book authors battling it out. The battle ground has limitted to the Najdorf mainly, sometimes to an extent that the engine doesn't even matter *that* much anymore. Is this optimal? It invites a lot of randomness, and also means that engines are often playing for three results. A recent example would be Falcon-Shredder IMHO, but there is at least a dozen of important tournament games that were influenced by book, mainly in battles between Kure, Noomen and Necchi books , but for the strongest programs it is not at all clear to me if this is a good idea. What would be a reasonable book ? Mainly one that avoids all stuff that is well-known to not work too well with computers, has common lines that can be used by humans ( or other bookers) to compete successfully against computers, and that takes strengths and weaknesses of the engine into account. Let's say this is two weeks of work and will lead to measurable effects ( I remember Andrew Williams did this with his engine and reported an improvement of 100 points, but I am not sure if this was tested to significance.) There must be an additional effect, when you continue work, check all the latest news and sources and work on further improvements - I just think there is not as many points to be found there as most people believe. But of course I can only guess, same as everyone else. This includes the book authors themselves, because they fight a moving target ( the opponent isn't forced to play into the preparations, nor even likely to, unless it's *another* Najdorf ;) ) - so they can't test either. Peter
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