Author: KarinsDad
Date: 12:48:15 01/29/99
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On January 29, 1999 at 14:39:16, Matt Frank wrote: >On January 29, 1999 at 14:00:02, KarinsDad wrote: > >>By everything, I also meant opening books and tablebases. I personally do not >>feel that a program is stronger just because someone improved it's opening book. >>To me, that is like saying the program is stronger because someone put it on >>faster hardware. >> >>To do a true test of strength vs. strength, you have to have a controlled >>environment and minimize only one variable, i.e. the engine. >> >>KarinsDad > >That's a peculiar statement. Do you mean to say that if we could somehow disable >Kasparov's opeing theory knowledge it would be a better test of him vs. me, and >our respective chess engines (i.e., brains). The way I see this you are imposing >a requirement that would require enourmous dilution in all of the commercial >software over the last 20 years. > >Matt Frank Which statement was peculiar? The topic is: How can we find out if programs (not humans) have been getting better? Of course, someone could write a better opening book and a better tablebase. No question about it. And yes, this does happen with the commercial programs. But if you want to compare engine strength versus engine strength to determine if the program got better and not compare whether some database has better data in it, then you should use the same databases. If I could take a 1200 rated playing program and give it an opening database of all moves out to 100 moves for each side (a very large database on the magnitude of 10^320 positions) and a tablebase which can handle all positions with 12 pieces on a side (another extremely large database which I cannot even guess how to calculate), then I would have a program that would never lose to Deep Blue since it would never use it's search engine for anything other than looking up data out of databases. Would CM6000 be stronger than CM5000 with a stronger opening database? Most likely. Is it a fair test to compare CM5000 with CM6000 with them both using the same opening database? Of course. That's the point. If CM6000 has an inferior engine to CM5000, but had a much more superior opening book, it could still win games due to being in a superior position out of the opening. The difference between humans and programs is that the opening book of a human is an integral part of him whereas this is not the case with a program. A program can use any opening book (in the appropriate format) or none at all. You cannot compare the two. KarinsDad
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