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Subject: Re: Ply Depth in relation to Elo again...

Author: Peter Kappler

Date: 19:54:45 05/23/00

Go up one level in this thread


On May 23, 2000 at 21:30:26, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On May 23, 2000 at 18:24:21, Mark Young wrote:
>[snip]
>>Lets be generous and say a ply is worth 100 rating points, and we can take Fritz
>>6a for an example. Now you said it does not matter if it’s the 1st going to 2 or
>>14 ply going to 15 ply.  Its pretty much the same, if I understand you
>>correctly. Lets assume Fritz 6a plays at a 2500 rating +/- 100 rating points,
>>with a average middle games search depth of 15 plies.
>>
>>15ply X 100 rating points = 1500 rating. Where are the extra 1000 rating points
>>coming from?  Is Fritz really rated 1500, or are some plies worth much more the
>>others.
>>
>>It is clear that the early plies are worth much more the later plies, and if you
>>plot it out it’s a curve. I don't know of one program that does not exhibit a
>>curve.
>
>That is well established, as both Dr. Hyatt's and Dr. Heinz's experiments
>showed.  However, as the depths increased, two very surprising things surfaced.
>
>At extreme depths, a linear model fits just as well as an exponential one.
>Hence, there may (or may not be) additional loss in the value of additional
>plies.
>
>Far more surprisingly (to me at least) is that the number of fresh ideas do not
>drop off.  IOW, if the program liked one move at ply 10, and another at ply 11,
>and yet another completely different one at ply 12, they can just keep coming up
>with new moves that have not been considered best at deeper plies.  This one is
>(to me at least) both astonishing and counter-intuitive.  Obviously, it can't
>possibly find more fresh ideas than the number of possible moves!
>

I need to go back and re-read the "Crafty/Dark Thought Go Deep" articles.

I hope that "new best moves" were only counted if the evaluation also changed
significantly.  If the change was just a few centipawns, then I think it's
misleading to report the new move as "better".

This stuff interests me, because I fundamentally believe that playing strength
must diminish with each additional ply.  This topic was discussed a couple of
months ago, and I was surprised that many people here don't agree.


>To say the least, it deserves further study.

Indeed.


--Peter




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