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Subject: Re: Tao update

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 19:59:15 01/12/01

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On January 12, 2001 at 22:46:33, Bas Hamstra wrote:

>Within a few days I will put a new version of Tao 5.5 on Frank's web site. There
>have been several small improvements, resulting in an ELO improvement of exactly
>50.00 points. The main difference is that it uses evaluation learning based on
>Temporal Difference. With all parameters set to zero it quickly learns how to
>improve the most important eval terms, and play better chess. In my opinion
>however, it is not able to set all terms to optimal values within a reasonable
>amount of time. Judge it yourself, you can let it learn from zero, or you can
>turn learning of and tweak the weights manually. So far, it seems best to start
>with a good guess and hand-tweak the few terms it does not seem to learn (or
>learns too slow). Having learning turned on has no performance penalty.
>
>The main differences with the previous version are:
>
>- Temporal Difference learning (can be scaled from 1000 to zero = off)
>- More accurate repetion detection
>- Better tactics (290 WAC within 5 sec)

What machine are you using?
The only programs that do better than that on my machine at that time control
are Crafty 18 and ExChess 4.  Both of those get 292.  My machine is a 1GHz
Athlon (980 MHz, actually, I think).

>- Eval changes to let it play more interestingly and actively
>- Eval parameters user settable
>- More accurate PV's (less half PV's that end in the hash table)
>- Improved search efficiency
>- Some changes and additions to the evaluation
>
>I have not hand tuned the eval weights for a long time, like in the previous
>version. Therefore the eval is sometimes over-optimistic and maybe not totally
>balanced. But still, IMO, it plays very interesting attacking active REAL chess.
>I have not had time to test it at very long time controls.

If you can send me a copy right away, I will run it over the weekend on a number
of fast machines.  Otherwise, I can wait until it get posted to Frank's page.




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