Author: Peter Kasinski
Date: 08:54:07 04/12/98
Tactics dominate chess. Many strategically healthy games are lost to calculable tactical shots. At all stages of the game, various forms of contact develop between the pieces and the squares they control. In this sense, a combination is a coordinated series of contacts. How long are they? The following is a basis for discussion. 1. Let’s start with an arbitrary number n (n=30 is fine). 2. Legal chess produces positions where combinations of less than n-plies are present. Right after 1. g4 e5 2. f3? a known possibilty of length=1 is available. 3. In theory, a tactical analysis of all master-level games is possible. Just take Deep Blue and demand a tactical check (to the depth of n-plies) of all positions reached in those games. 4. Presumably, this analysis discards many “quiet” positions, and returns a large number of cases where a tactical shot of k-plies (k < n) exists. 5. After exhaustive analysis, we get a distribution showing how many combinations were found for each number between 1 and n-1. Hypothesis: There is a number q (q < n) which limits most combinations, i.e. longer shots are physically possible, but statistically insignificant. Consequently, slow searching programs will benefit more from each additional ply (speed of hardware) than programs already approaching q in their search. Hypothetical distribution: q-3 75% Program A (slow searcher) q-2 85% q-1 92% Program B (fast searcher) q 94% of all tactics found q+1 95% q+2 96% If A and B are equally strong today, I like A’s chances much better if we double the speed of both CPU’s. I recently played a few games between Fritz 5 on PII 375MHz,160Mb RAM (128Mb hash) and Rebel 9 on AMD K6-300 MHz. (Yes, both machines are overclocked.) Level 40/120, 20/60. Hardly a scientifically sufficient sample, but for the first time Rebel 9 didn't seem to be (to quote Amir) "hopelessly outgunned tactically" and, in fact, produced a positive score. Something to it? cheers, Peter Kasinski
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