Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Which is better? consistency or brilliance?

Author: Pham Minh Tri

Date: 16:49:20 07/10/01

Go up one level in this thread


On July 10, 2001 at 19:04:54, Rich Van Gaasbeck wrote:

>I guess I wasn't clear.  Perhaps brilliant wasn't the right word.
>
>Imagine that one engine was implemented on top of a magical engine that always
>gave a list of moves ordered from best to worse.  This first engine (the
>consistent one) always plays the second best move.  The second engine (the
>brillant one) plays the best move (obtained from our magic engine underneath)
>95% of the time and the 5th best move the rest of the time.  If both engines
>played a lot of games against a lot of computers and humans, which would have
>the higher rating.

Hm, your number seems not be fair to compare. Certainly, the second one is
always better than the first one. 5% of not bestmove is too small. It is much
smaller than the harms of selecting not good opening lines, play the black side,
effects of random numbers/computing, null-move, pruning, etc. If your engine is
the second kind, it should be in the top of the world ;-)
(It is likely you have the best program with a very small bug).

Note that the most important period of a game is middle - around 20-30 moves. 5%
is converted into 1-2 moves only (and 5th best moves are usually not fatal
mistakes) - I think, this is a desirious number.


>On July 10, 2001 at 17:52:04, Fernando Villegas wrote:
>
>>I do not understand that kind of dilema or clasification. Consistency and
>>brilliance cannot be compared in a basis of "this Or this". It cannot be, for
>>instance, that a guy that makes a brilliant move has not been a consistent
>>player in doing good moves before the brilliant one. You cannot play a brilliant
>>move in a messy position derived of consistently bad moves. To make consistently
>>good moves is a precondition to do, from time to time, a really brilliant one.
>>But there is more: it cannot be, also, that a player -human or not- makes "only"
>>good moves, but never a brilliant one. It cannot, because sometimes the good
>>move to do is what you would call "brilliant". If he does not play it, then he
>>is not "consistently" playing good moves.
>>
>>Fernando



This page took 0 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.