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Subject: Re: The 16 ply challenge restated

Author: Gian-Carlo Pascutto

Date: 15:31:22 09/15/00

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On September 14, 2000 at 21:47:10, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On September 14, 2000 at 21:08:56, Amir Ban wrote:
>>The point was that the nominal ply depth has little or zero meaning, since the
>>whole pruning and extension context should be weighed in. Alternatively, it is
>>possible to change the pruning and extension strategy to reach any ply depth >>you wish to name.
>
>Of course, and it will not be useful if it introduces a statistically
>significant amount of error.  Programs that add the wrong extensions will
>perform poorly.

Right...but this is not a refutation of his statement. Not al all...

>>For me, it is enough to note that the challenge is irrelevant for Junior, as >>it does not even count depth in plies.
>
>Semantics.  It expands the depth of the search on each new iteration.  Call it
>what you want, it's depth in plies.  I do know that you have special extensions
>for recaptures, etc. but that could be considered a type of pruning.

Utter nonsense.

By this definition, I have a program that can search over 1000 plys.

>>Ply depth is not more than a convenient fiction.
>
>Ply depth can be rigidly and correctly defined.

This is correct, but only for fixed-depth searchers without forward
pruning. That is a VERY small subset of chessplaying algorithms.

>I suppose the best possible measure is "finding the right answer"
>but that is a lot harder to estimate than depth in
>plies.

If answer == move or game-theoretic value then I believe it's the only
good way to compare.

--
GCP



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