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Subject: Re: Correspondence Match (To Uri and Dr. Hyatt)

Author: Steve Coladonato

Date: 05:13:51 05/04/00

Go up one level in this thread


On May 03, 2000 at 18:26:09, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On May 03, 2000 at 12:52:01, Steve Coladonato wrote:
>
>>On May 03, 2000 at 10:38:57, blass uri wrote:
>>
>>>On May 03, 2000 at 09:41:19, Steve Coladonato wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 03, 2000 at 03:29:48, Jouni Uski wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On May 02, 2000 at 13:03:47, Steve Coladonato wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>There is a correspondence match going on between Steve Ham and both Fritz 6(a)
>>>>>>and Nimzo 7.32.  The games are documented at the following site:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>http://correspondencechess.com/campbell/index.htm
>>>>>>
>>>>>>They appear to be quite interesting and the analysis by Mr. Ham is very
>>>>>>extensive.  It's interesting that even after 19-21 hrs of evaluation, the
>>>>>>computers are only getting to 15-16 ply.  Also, it looks like Mr. Ham has the
>>>>>>upper hand in the games.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Regards.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Steve
>>>>>
>>>>>I am not so sure if Ham has upper hand. And note, that most moves were played in
>>>>>3-best move mode!
>>>>>
>>>>>Jouni
>>>>
>>>>Jouni,
>>>>
>>>>What is "3-best move mode"?
>>>
>>>Chessbase engines can search the 3 best move instead of only searching for the
>>>best move.
>>>
>>>They did it in the beginning of the game and probably they could search more
>>>deep by searching only for the best move.
>>>
>>>searching for 3 best moves instead of only the best move is about the same as
>>>being 2-3 times slower.
>>>
>>>Even if we do not assume diminishing return from being 2-3 times faster
>>>the demage for programs in this case is not more than 100 elo and if we consider
>>>also the fact that the programs did it only in the opening the demage is
>>>probably less than 50 elo so it will probably not change the reuslt of the match
>>>because the expected changed in the result is less than 0.25 point
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>Uri,
>>
>>When a computer engine evaluates a position, does it not take all the possible
>>moves and compute an evaluation for each move?  In this case the three "highest"
>>scores would be the top three and there is really no effect on the processing.
>>I understand that variations within a given move are also calculated but is this
>>not just normal processing?
>>
>>Steve
>
>
>no.  Alpha/beta finds the best move and only proves that the other moves are
>worse, without proving how much worse they are.  To do this requires a lot more
>time.

You have both given me essentially the same answer.  I've never looked at the
code for a chess engine so I don't know exactly what Alpha/Beta does.  But the
answers here are confusing to me.  I was under the impression that the best move
was determined by calculating the eval for the candidate moves.  Your answers
are implying that that is incorrect and something else is used to determine the
best move, not the eval for the position.  But if that is the case, is not what
the program calculates somehow related to the eval?  And if so, saving the
result in an array would not incur that much more overhead so that the program
would know what the top three moves are or rather the order of all candidate
moves based on whatever it is calculating.

Steve



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