Author: Albert Silver
Date: 16:33:45 06/04/00
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On June 04, 2000 at 19:09:12, Gareth McCaughan wrote:
>On June 03, 2000 at 12:49:03, Albert Silver wrote:
>
>> What rules would you suggest? There are some obvious ones, but there are also
>> very disputable ones that have too many exceptions to be of much use,
>> other than to a human player. I know that many of the program have the
>? more obvious ones such as the advantage of rook and bishop vs. rook and
>> knight, or bishop vs. knight in pawn endings with pawns on both wings,
>> BUT knight over bishop if the pawns or connected on the same wing, etc...
>> What other rules though? Most positions admit too many exceptions for
>> to be of much use, and really just have to be played out.
>
>By not special-casing positions like this, you adopt the general
>rule that they're no different from other positions with the same
>balance of material.
They're not different. If you're a pawn up you should play it unless it's
already blockaded and clear (or the program has 9-piece tablebases and declares
it a draw). What difference would it make if without special-case knowledge the
program judges this at +1.00 or with special-case knowledge it lowers this eval
to +0.4? In both cases it will believe it has the advantage and in both cases
will refuse to draw and play it out, only in the second case you'll be slowing
the program by giving it useless special knowledge.
Albert Silver
>That's probably wrong more often than, say,
>deducting half a pawn in positions "like this one" (whatever that
>might mean).
Who are you quoting when you say that?
> Every term in the evaluation of every chess program
>(apart from things that handle forced wins and draws) represents
>a general principle that has exceptions.
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