Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 07:05:52 11/28/99
Go up one level in this thread
On November 28, 1999 at 04:08:19, blass uri wrote: >On November 27, 1999 at 22:28:32, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On November 27, 1999 at 19:46:52, Fernando Villegas wrote: >> >>>On November 27, 1999 at 17:33:13, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> >>>>On November 27, 1999 at 12:18:07, Fernando Villegas wrote: >>>> >>>>>I do not understand your point, Bob. This is not a match between two computers, >>>>>but many. How a program could do well just tuning against Tiger? Maybe that >>>>>could mean to un-tune against any other of the concurrence. Maybe some opening >>>>>preparations, but... >>>>>Fernando >>>> >>>> >>>>This is easy. A year ago, due to some unusual new eval features I added, I >>>>ended up with a version that had very little trouble with Fritz 5 at any time >>>>control. It won so many games that Lonnie accused me of using a Cray to play >>>>against him. If I sent _that_ version to the SSDF for testing, it would have >>>>done very well against fritz, because fritz would be totally unprepared. But >>>>once they saw what was happening, some adjusting on their end (king safety and >>>>passed pawns in particular) and this advantage would have eyvaporated. >>>> >>>>Almost always the _last released_ program goes to the top of the SSDF. In this >>>>case, it is an _unreleased_ version, which means _nobody_ had a chance to look >>>>at the book, and the depth, at the evals, and find out what it is doing.... >>>> >>>>Sort of an "element of surprise"... >>> >>> >>>Please let me clear this issue a little more. >>>a) SSDF testing is not made by the programmers so they couldn't tune his >>>programs according to every new opponent. >> >>I didn't say (or imply) that they did. I am simply saying that Tiger has >>had ample opportunity to play against other programs in private... and that >>once it becomes public, other programs will have ample opportunity to play >>against it. And as usually happens, things will then change in surprising >>ways... >> >>It has _nothing_ to do with the SSDF... just that the program has not been >>'seen' by anyone else. You will be surprised what you can learn about a >>program after watching its analysis for a while... So far, that hasn't >>happened. But it will... >> >> >> >> >> >>>b)Being so, if, let us say, anyway F6 is delivered to the swedish people after >>>being tuned against Tiger 12, my question is, what would happen to F6 against >>>other programs? Why tunning against program X neccesarily means the likelihood >>>to get more points in a pool constituted by many opponents different to X? >> >>It happens all the time. At one point Ed had 8 machines running auto232 matches >>against his 'competition'. If one program beats you consistently, you can find >>out what it is seeing that you are not, and fix that without breaking yourself >>vs other opponents... >> >> >> >>>c) That is the core of my question and the only way I found to understand your >>>point is to suppose that Tiger 12 brings not only some specific features that >>>could be anulated so and so, but general, universal improvements so if you tune >>>againts them, you improve your own program "in general" >> >>That is possible as well. Several years ago I added "outside passed pawn" >>code to Crafty. At that time, hardly any commercial programs did anything >>with this and as a result, crafty won many a endgame due to this. It wasn't >>long before it worked less frequently. Ditto for the trapped bishop on a7.t >>A few 'fixed it'. A few fixed it before I started evaluating it myself. But >>not everybody... a couple of programs _still_ fall for it. >> >>Another good example is king safety. I don't know of any program (so far) that >>is very good handling king safety. Once someone does a program that is really a >>strong attacker, everyone will either fix it finally, or get rolled into small >>balls over and over. (Older versions of Genius suffered badly from this, >>although I don't know about the newest one). >> >> >> >> >> >>>d) In this way, tunning againts Tiger 12 would means tunning against any other >>>program. >> >>And quite possible tuning to do _worse_ against human players. Which is not >>something I am ready to do yet, myself. But for those driven by SSDF rankings, >>anything goes.. > >I believe that the result of tuning against computers will be usually also >better results against humans. > >You can do better results against humans at fast time control by using not >objective evaluation to go for positions that humans do not like but I believe >that this idea is going to fail against strong humans in tournament time control >when they do not do the tactical mistakes that they do at blitz. > >Uri You might believe that to be true, but I _know_ it is not. Because when you play against a computer, you play against something that is _very_ incomplete as a chess player. If your 'computer' opponent doesn't understand blocked positions, it will probably try to avoid them. So you will _never_ see how badly you do against an opponent that does understand them. If your program doesn't understand pawn majorities, and your opponent doesn't, then you will _never_ see how badly you do against a GM that understands them well. The two pools of players are far different. yes, a computer is tactically stronger and if you tune to handle that weakness, you get better. But that is the _only_ place where computers are even close to the Grandmasters, and all the other weaknesses they have won't show up when you play a computer that doesn't understand anything but tactics...
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