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

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:16:02 05/24/00

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On May 24, 2000 at 01:53:48, blass uri wrote:

>On May 24, 2000 at 00:17:35, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On May 23, 2000 at 22:54:45, Peter Kappler wrote:
>>
>>>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".
>>
>>Why would you want to call such moves "not better"???  _many_ moves made by
>>today's engines are just "slightly" better than other moves that would be
>>made at shorter time limits.  But either you believe that .01 is better, or
>>you have to ignore evaluations completely.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>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.
>>>
>>
>>
>>The problem is that the only "old" evidence was self-play with varied depth.
>>Which is probably not a good test, since small changes are often magnified in
>>self-test play, while at other times small changes have no effect at all.
>>
>>New evidence suggests that at least thru 15-16 plies, things are still picking
>>up with each additional ply...
>>
>>Which you believe is up to you...
>>
>>Neither is exactly overwhelming evidence...
>>
>>DB did make a statement however, with its 17 ply searches.  DT at 10-12 plies
>>got destroyed by Kasparov.  DB at 15-18 plies played far differently.
>
>We cannot learn much from comparison between deep thought and deep blue because
>they had not the same evaluation function and deep thought had search problems
>and could not detect repetitions in the search.
>
>Uri


It could detect repetitions, just not in the last 4 plies (which was done in the
hardware).



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