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Subject: Re: Is it true that Junior6a mediocre on tactical & positional test suit

Author: José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba

Date: 13:54:08 03/16/00

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On March 16, 2000 at 15:59:24, G. R. Morton wrote:

>On March 16, 2000 at 14:59:48, Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>>On March 16, 2000 at 13:49:28, G. R. Morton wrote:
>>
>>>If really true, can someone try to explain how can this can be with its highest
>>>rating against computers? Enrique Irazoqui at
>>>http://www.computerschach.de/tourn/cad00.htm calinmed that Junior6 showed
>>>superior positional understanding in actual play. Can someone enlighten?
>>
>>Test suites are just one measure of a program's ability to play.
>>
>>Little Goliath is a killer in test suites, but does not play as well as the very
>>best chess engines (but it's no slouch either).  Rebel can be tuned to play
>>strongly or to solve chess test suites strongly, and the settings are very
>>different.
>
>You are suggesting that a program can be very good at both tactical & positional
>test suites but mediocre at play (& vice-versa) but not saying how this can be.

	Playing chess and solving testsuites are different tasks, and different
approaches give best results for each of them.

>But if this is true it is very puzzling since every move of a computer game can
>be thought of the  software s solution to a tactical or positional test.

	Not quite. Most positions seen in a game do not have a key move that solves it.

>There
>should be a very strong correlation one would think.

	There is no correlation between playing strenght and performance at testsuites.

>As a comparison, people
>who score very high on I.Q. and SAT tests are nor just good on such tests
>which is, of course, why these tests are given.  Their strong correlation with
>high performance or success in many other activities are well noted (see  The
>Bell Curve  book for instance).

	I think this comparison is not valid. Human beings are very different from
chess engines.

>Did not Larry Kauffman once claim that his test
>suites could be used to fairly accurately the software s rating?  Anyway the
>interesting question of  how  remins.

	There are some known trick to improve performance at testsuites which do not
increase playing strenght. Reducing the pawn value is one of them, I think.
José.



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