Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 10:52:44 11/09/00
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On November 09, 2000 at 03:22:19, Joe Besogn wrote: >There are some posts under I made which endeavour to explain it. In the thread >"for those interested in new paradigm", or whatever it was called. > >I found your answers difficult because of mindset and word-meaning >discrepancies, but I think what you're saying is that null-move was a >revolutionary change because later "we kicked ass". Meaning Lang and presumably >Schroeder programs. It was a dramatic increase in strength for those who wanted it. I doubt that it affected the top level because they either had it or had ways to deal with it. >In Kuhn terms, the crisis state you describe was that 'amateur' programs were >weak. > >Hyatt's response is that null-move was a typical field evolutionary development >over 15 years, from Kaissa, Berliner, through Beal and Donninger. When I first met Bob, he did not sound like a null move believer. In my first conversations with him he didn't sound like someone who thought it would increase strength massively, and I am pretty sure that when he first did it in Crafty, he used R=1 rather than R=2, and may not have allowed multiple null-moves in the same path. If null move is in Kaissa, it is not in the literature that I have seen. Null move in the Berliner program was published in 1990, unenthusiastically. I think there might be two Don Beal null-move articles. The one in ACC5 (1989) is mostly about null-move quiescence search. I wouldn't read that article and rush out and add null-move forward pruning to my search. I would read it and realize that the Belle quiescent search model had null-move built in. These guys are publishing about the cardiac effects of nitroglycerine. They neglect to mention that you can blow the hell out of things with it. That is of course much more interesting and fun, which anyone who has taken nitroglycerine would agree. It was the Donninger article that convinced me that null-move was not just some goofy academic thing like "chunking" and so on. >Null-move is forward-pruning, right? Lang and Schroeder did this forward pruning >at that time by working on some chess knowledge at each node. Null-move does the >forward pruning by a depth-reduced search at each node. I don't think it was enthuiastically adopted by the amateur/academic set until the Donninger article. That's most of the programs, and it's almost all of the people who will talk aout programs. >Schroeder, I have read, doesn't use null-move, even today. > >So, if you claim that 'amateur programs' were in one paradigm before nullmove, >and then another after, you are going to be implying that Schroeder/Lang >programs are in yet another one, now, and then. Unless you argue that the two >forward pruning techniques (knowledge vs search) are sufficiently conceptually >identical that the 'amateur' paradigm merged with the Lang/Schroeder. Too messy, >I think. > >Hyatt's model of nullmove as evolution seems stronger. imo. Maybe. It's not like I really know what I'm talking about. I just think that the enthusiastic adoption of null-move a) created an immediate major increase in strength amongst the non-professionals, and b) was triggered by the Donninger article, regardless of what articles had been written previously. bruce >>bruce >> >>>>Other programs have had success with techniques that weren't thought to be >>>>useful, for instance self-teaching. This hasn't started a wave of self-learning >>>>programs yet, but there have been some interesting articles and some interesting >>>>attempts. >>>> >>>>We will probably see more interest in speculative evaluation since Christophe's >>>>speculative program has been a success. >>>> >>>>All the programs that I know of now are built on a brute-force framework, with >>>>selective extension and selective pruning. If anyone can make a strong program >>>>that doesn't use these mechanisms, that will cause the most major shift we've >>>>seen so far. >>>> >>>>bruce
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