Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 11:27:05 03/16/98
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On March 16, 1998 at 13:48:00, Ed Schröder wrote: >Get rid of double games. What do they contribute to comp-comp games? >Nothing in my opinion. Assume we have program A, which will play strong chess and learn from its mistakes. If program A figures out that it scores 100% against you with 1. ... c5, 50% with 1. ... e5, and 0% with 1. ... e6, it will play 1. ... c5 every time or almost every time, and will rarely or never play 1. ... e6. Assume program B just plays strong chess. It will play 1. ... c5, 1. ... e5, and 1. ... e6 randomly, regardless of result against you. Program A is obvioiusly a more challenging opponent. The programmer of program A has spent time adding a learning feature that is effective at playing against the weaknesses of specific opponents, be they computer or human, and this is a perfectly honest thing to do, a legitimate increase in strength. Obviously program A deserves to be higher on any rating list. We saw Kasparov do this against Anand in the last PCA world championship, he played the Sicilian Dragon a couple of times, and nobody every said this was unfair. It was obviously up to Anand to realize that he should find an improvement or vary. This is distinct from killer book discussions. I don't believe that program A should play 1000 games against program B, learning the whole time, then face a fresh install of program B, who has never seen program A. It's also distinct from discussions about SSDF testing methods. One game each on 20 machines is obviously much different than 20 games on one machine. bruce
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