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Subject: Re: Van Wely-Fritz 1-0

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 16:35:06 05/14/00

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On May 14, 2000 at 18:01:45, Pete R. wrote:

>I agree, and forgive my ignorance, but isn't this largely a matter of evaluation
>tuning?  It's impossible to see tactically the consequences of these kingside
>pawn advances until it's too late, so this has to be compensated by positional
>evaluation just as a human does.  Any human player can look at the late
>positions and conclude that black has no counterplay as a direct result of
>white's annexation of kingside space. I'm not saying this would be easy to
>program, but in theory a perfect evaluation function would have the computer
>*appearing* to play according to planning, and thwarting the planning of its
>opponent.  No?  And isn't pawn structure a major part of eval functions?  Such
>things are beyond tactical evaluation, but modern programs obviously still have
>a hard time seeing that white can create such a favorable structure within a few
>moves. Once the tactical realizations sink in it's far too late.  Pawn structure
>patterns are easy for us humans to evaluate, but obviously this is still a
>computer eval problem.

No matter what you do you can still get brutally smashed.  It is possible for a
human to reach a position where the computer has no counterplay and just turn
the screws until the computer is dead.  There are other ways it can happen, but
this one was a good example of a common way.

It is very embarassing to be on the computer side in a game like that, and I'm
trying to defend Frans.  My own thing has played games like this, and so has
everyone else's.

It's a failure of long-term planning.  Computers are great at short-term
planning, and they fake the long-term planning.  All of them do.  Sometimes
their shortcomings are exposed.

bruce



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