Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: A New Self-Play Experiment -- Diminishing Returns Shown with 95% Conf.

Author: Michael Neish

Date: 01:19:42 05/25/00

Go up one level in this thread


vidence is inconclusive, IMHO.  And I see _far_ too many positions in games
>>I go over where one more ply would have made a difference.

>
>You will always see cases when one ply would make the difference.
>The only claim about diminishing return is that you will see it more often at
>small depthes.

Excuse me, but my understanding may be a little skewed.

I can see arguments in favour and against there being diminishing returns for
deeper searches (which is maybe why no one can say one way or the other).

On the one hand I don't see why there should be diminishing returns if, say,
the Knight fork that wins your Queen could always be one more move down the
line.  If you're at move 30 and the deadly fork is 15 ply later, and you can
just see it, then if you put the position back a couple of ply you might not be
able to see it anymore.

On the other hand, deadly tactics that arise later on are probably due to errors
you make earlier that in a way set it off.  If you don't see any deadly tactics
coming within 15 ply then chances are you're doing something right, so perhaps
you are reducing the chances of them appearing later (I admit this argument is
far weaker than the previous one.  I'm not even sure it's correct.).

Well one of the arguments has to be wrong.

Comments?

Cheers,

Mike.




This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.