Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 22:38:25 11/17/00
Go up one level in this thread
On November 17, 2000 at 21:43:17, Bob Durrett wrote:
>How do humans get high performance ratings? They win most of the time and do it
>against strong opposition.
>
>This must be true for chess-playing programs too.
>
>High probability of getting the move right results in higher ratings, since
>ratings are merely measures of average performance. Ratings are everything.
>
>It seems that the best approach to engine design surely must be a probabilistic
>approach, more than anything else. Add whatever features increase the
>probabilities and discard the rest.
>
>One adds "knowledge" until the performance drops. One adds "speed" till the
>performance drops. And many innovations are added, but thrown out if the
>performance drops. But performance must be measured in probabilistic terms
>inasmuch as very high probability of winning against strong opposition is "good
>enough."
>
>So, in the final analysis, isn't that really the way the top programs are
>produced?
>
>They are tested, tested again, and then tested ten more times. Why? So that
>they will get the right answer most of the time, at least more often than the
>competition.
>
>Any computations which do not "earn their salt" are discarded. If they take up
>too much computer resources too often then they are bad.
>
>Developing the very best programs must be like playing a game of poker. You try
>to win most of the time, and if you do, you go home rich.
>
>I doubt that the top programs are intentionally designed to meet any idealistic
>goals, like "being knowledge based" or "being deep searchers." The only
>idealism seems to be to up the rating.
>
>Incidentally, maybe "going home rich" is the really best, practical, criteria
>for engine design. If you can sell a million copies of a poorly-performing
>program, then you "win."
You are right in almost all you say in this post.
I began to really improve my program when I understood that the problem was not
to find the right answer all the time, but to find it as often as possible.
So I switched from "brute force" (which sees everything, but can take a lot of
time) to "selective" (which sometimes miss the right move, but most often goes
quicker to find the right answer).
Christophe
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