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Subject: Re: Crafty's play when behind

Author: Vincent Vega

Date: 20:21:05 05/30/00

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On May 30, 2000 at 20:19:59, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On May 30, 2000 at 19:27:46, Vincent Vega wrote:
>
>>I looked at Crafty's play when opponent is ahead on material lately and I am
>>disappointed.  It seems that Crafty will let you exchange the pieces away till
>>it's too late.  This should be a trivial change to the code and it could make
>>Crafty much better in such situation as it?s much easier to create complications
>>that could improve the situation with more pieces.  Are there any arguments
>>against such a change?
>
>
>It already has such code.  But quite often it is a toss-up...  do you avoid
>trading which makes it even easier for your opponent to mate you?

My thinking would be that once you're behind by a piece, you might as well
gamble a bit to extend the game.  What I've seen happen is that Crafty evaluates
trading at maybe a 0.3 advantage, but a couple moves after the exchange, it sees
this advantage disappear.  I think avoiding trading makes the opponent work much
harder to capitalize on his advantage and plays into computer’s strengths of
good defense, tactical complications, which often occur in such situations, and
good time usage.

>
>I don't see it losing enough games that this appears to be a serious problem
>in its overall performance.  Have you seen something bad on a server or
>something?

I guess this problem doesn't affect Crafty's "real" playing strength much
because it's rare for it to be a piece behind.  I've seen it in my own
experiments with time and material handicaps, not in any server games.



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