Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 19:24:18 07/06/00
Go up one level in this thread
On July 06, 2000 at 22:03:26, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On July 06, 2000 at 19:41:31, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: > >>Hello, >> >>this is a post i just did at crafty list after a long number of mails about >>a project called CAP which people tend to believe they can use it for >>creating their openingsbook. Some warnings are on their place, when you >>want to let such a book compete with commercial books. >> >>I first showed that CAP goes completely wrong already quite soon in opening. >>Like 1.d4,d5 2.c4,e5 3.dxe5 there best move is d4 all other moves you can >>go home and rest but first resign the game. > >This is a bogus title for a thread. CAP isn't right in all cases. Neither >is "most popular move". Nor "move suggested by Kasparov (or Anand or Karpov >or any other GM)". > >CAP data _is_ good and reliable. You simply have to use it as one of several >decision-making ideas. Not _the_ decision making idea. Weighted with other >things like frequency, learning, even simple positional evaluation, CAP data >can contribute to a better move choice. Used by itself, it can also contribute >to a bad choice. As can even a top GM's suggestion(s). > >If you don't want to use the data, don't. But I don't see any reason to >suggest that others should not try it. They might have a better idea than >you do (or than I do). > >Dismissing something just because you don't see (yet) how to use it is not >a good way to make progress. Had I dismissed bitmaps so quickly, I would have >missed something that has turned out to be very interesting and useful. This is the ideal time to use CAP as a punching bag. We have this big pile of raw data and it has not been studied very carefully. It should be fairly simple to poke a few holes into a straw man like "Abandon your opening books and use CAP data since it is so great." I don't think anyone has advocated that, at this stage of the game. I think that possibly the most interesting results will come from an analysis of the 60 million plus positions analyzed at fast time control. I have some machines with large memory here, and I might just load the whole shooting match as a giant tree and minimax the whole thing. Who knows what interesting thing might fall out of it? At any rate, what we have is raw information, and as such, I think it's pretty good information. [In my completely unbiased and aloof scientific estimation] ;-) I will say that in my opinion, CAP is in the "Kitty-Hawk" stage right now. It does not look like it would be of much value for transportation, but you never know. And (in my continued estimation) if you have _no_ opening book (perhaps half of the winboard programs are in that sad state of affairs) then CAP data is certainly better than *nothing*. And, combined with a few thousand SuperGM games, you can make a decent opening book. It won't have the quality of a commercial tool, but someday even that might be generated automatically. I know Vincent's opinion is that we won't make it past the primorial ooze stage, but I think I am patient enough to wait and see.
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