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Subject: Re: Positions of known value?

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 14:52:08 07/25/00

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On July 25, 2000 at 14:12:46, Tom Kerrigan wrote:

>It would be nice to make a change to your evaluation function and get immediate,
>accurate feedback.
>
>So my idea is to get a huge collection of positions of known value (i.e., "white
>has a stronger position") and then see how well the known values correlate to
>the evaluation function's scores.
>
>Does anybody have any ideas for getting a high-quality collection of such
>positions? Or any comments on this approach in general?
>
>-Tom


The problem I see with this idea is that although it sounds fine on the surface,
I do not see a way to implement it.

For example, say your program says that position A is advantage white 0.2 pawns.
What happens when you change your evaluation and it now says advantage white
0.26 pawns. Did you improve your evaluation code or make it worse?

And what omnipotent being or program decides that position A is really a 0.22
pawns advantage for white? Ditto for the rest of the positions in the
collection.

I could see someone doing a lot of work setting this type of thing up and then
either the person using this mis-interprets the data, the data for some
positions is incorrect, or the person changes their evaluation routine, thinks
they have improved their program, and in reality, for some percentage of
positions, has actually worsened their program's playing ability.

If you could explain a type of implementation that might work, I'm definitely
willing to listen.

KarinsDad :)



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