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

Author: G. R. Morton

Date: 17:25:02 03/16/00

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On March 16, 2000 at 17:20:19, blass uri wrote:

>On March 16, 2000 at 16:54:08, José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>Reducing the piece value in general is one of them but reducing the pawn value
>is not one of them.
>
>One of the changes in Junior6 relative to Junior5 is reducing the pawn value and
>Junior6 has problems in finding right sacrifices of a piece for pawns because of
>this reason.
>
>Uri

Thanks, I think you &  Mr Ruvalcaba have made some perceptive points.  I
especially find interesting your theory (posted in reply to me elsewhere)that
these tests are not really very good because we really don’t have all that good
an understanding of chess, especially, I would think, for devising good
positional test suites.  Would you say, then, that the top rated Junior 6a is
probably the best positional player (as Enrique might claim) but the positional
tests, say, on which Rebel 10B outperformed Junior6 were not adequate to
indicate this?



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