Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: For Bruce: Crafty vs. Gambit-Tiger 1.a3 a6

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 20:27:47 11/10/00

Go up one level in this thread



On November 10, 2000 at 22:20:51, Thorsten Czub wrote:

>On November 10, 2000 at 21:58:09, pavel wrote:
>>the book move thats equal for both white and black.
>>without opening book some programs plays stupid, other plays relatively better.
>
>nonsense. from a3 a6 all programs should play good or bad.
>its an equal position.

You showed a game between Crafty and Tiger and I said that it didn't demonstrate
anything about what was in the title.  The title spoke of accuracy vs
inaccuracy.  What happened in the game was fairly accurate defense, an
aggressive attack, and an endgame blunder.

I also made mention that you can get an attacking position more easily in an
opening where you are afforded one by choice of opening.

You took this second statement and ran with it, and did this a3/a6 thing.  I
think that was a fine game.  Gambit got a good attack and won the game.  You
showed that it is aggressive and plays well, and Crafty crashed and burned,
which I'm sure will appeal to a lot of people, but I hope that the games aren't
viewed as personality battles.

There is so much other stuff swirling around here that it's difficult to discuss
what is actually presented.  What is going on is much more than a discussion of
a chess game or a discussion of evaluation philosophies or anything else.  A lot
of this stuff is people being pissed off at each other because they can't deal
with the simple fact that nobody is right 100% of the time.

My god, who cares.

And pavel makes a mistake to try to get you to specify some match condition that
will solve everything once and for all.  It's silly to make you jump through
hoops rather than just talking about what these game-analogies are supposed to
prove.

Do you want to prove that Bob is stupid?  That is kind of nasty and I don't
believe that that is what you are after, but if it is, that's probably won't be
very productive.

Do you want to prove that Tiger is better than Crafty?  One game won't prove
that so why even bother trying with one game?

Do you propose to prove that speculation is better than a more conservative
evaluation strategy?  The first game didn't show this, there was no speculation
in it.  In the second game Crafty went pawn-grabbing.  I think that even a
conservative eval should have been able to decide that putting the queen offside
and going after a bad pawn is a bad idea.  And without having played it through,
I don't know if the pawn grabbing was just something you do after you realize
you are lost, or if it was the cause of the problem, or something else.

I think what you have the best chance of proving is that a program that is tuned
for aggression can bowl over other computer opponents, and make itself look
great in the process.

No argument there, certainly.  I think that aggression is a great evaluation
term.

Perhaps in Tiger this is also linked to speculation, but I haven't seen much
speculation out of it yet.  I do like the idea of speculation, and want to make
mine more speculative..  I think this can make a program play more interesting
chess, and in the long term might make it play stronger chess as well.

bruce



This page took 0.02 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.