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Subject: Re: Symmetry in Evaluation - Good or Bad?

Author: Ratko V Tomic

Date: 12:28:50 10/19/00

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>I disagree.

I think we're weighing differently what we consider typical position, each has
in mind different sample. As you point out, different causes (diminishing
returns, evaluation errors, position symmetry, quiet vs active positions, etc)
act in opposite direction in how they amplify or attenuate the 1 ply difference.

Although I agreee that current style programs may be nearing the diminishing
returns region in deepening the brute-force search, I was talking about some
future more advanced algorithms which will push that region farther. I.e. the
point I was making is that the more advanced (far sighteed, not in the brute
force sense) the program, the greater difference it will see from 1 ply
difference.

To use your metaphor, my point there was that a more advanced program will be a
more sensitive amplifier. That is a separate issue of whether there is much
difference to amplify to begin with in any given position and what is the
"typical" position, what is the sample. Whatever the initial difference is, the
more sensitive amplifier you use the greater the output difference, or in my
terms, the more advanced, far sighted program is the more evaluation asymmetry
it will exhibit for 1 ply initial difference (in addition to other visual
asymmetries of a position).

To put this back in the context of the original discussion, if I am looking at a
new program with a performance within the top few, Gambit Tiger for example, one
indicator that we're dealing with a new kind of algorithms, the more advanced
species of chess programs, would be larger than typical asymmetry in its
position status display. A top program which is merely a technically more
refined version of the current brute force prgrams would not increase noticably
(if at all) the asymmetry. For such program I wouldn't expect to improve much in
the next release.

But if I see a top program which also shows atypically large evaluation
asymmetry, I would be alerted, maybe this is the early scout of the new species
which will, within a year or two, drive the current style programs into
extinction. Like with genetic mutations (or the hi-tech hype du jour) although
most novelties are worthless flash in a pan, the rise of a new advanced species
always begins with a novelty.




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