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Subject: Re: Fritz5

Author: Don Dailey

Date: 10:26:24 12/20/97

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On December 19, 1997 at 23:54:21, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>This is a lot of posting to say that a program had a bad game, and a lot
>of conclusions based upon this one bad game.
>
>Every program has a bad game now and then, perhaps even often.  Mine
>sure does.  I had a couple (maybe 3: MChess, Junior, and to a lesser
>extent Nimzo) at the WMCCC that anyone is welcome to publish and berate
>me about.  One even involved a misjudged passed pawn.
>
>Most losses aren't very pretty.
>
>Fritz got tangled up k-side in this game and mis-judged a q-side pawn.
>It let its position get pretty ugly before that, too.
>
>Mine would have mis-judged the pawn also, I'm not sure why.  I think the
>problem is in the search, but it's also possible that more knowledge
>about passed pawn "remoteness" could be a good thing.  It is hard to
>judge passers right because they are either worth nothing or the win the
>game, and the difference has a lot to do with specific circumstances
>which are hard to evaluate statically.
>
>I'm sure you have plenty of games where CS-Tal had a bad game.  I think
>you can probably dig one up where it mis-judged a passed pawn, even.
>
>bruce

Hi Bruce,

This was well said.  I've seen the very best programs look absolutely
stupid in the right circumstances.

I did a bunch of passed pawn work in Cilkchess after losing too many
games
to Genius.   The funny things about these games were that not many of
them were well played,  we made Genius look stupid, and Genius made us
look stupid.   I would hate to be judged on one of the games we lost!

In the cases where we lost, almost all of them were passed pawn based.
The best programs seem to have a much better handle on passed pawn
understanding.  As difficult to measure as it is, I think king safety
is even harder,  sometimes a term is not relevant, other times it's
crucial!


- Don



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