Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 18:14:03 07/10/01
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Ok, pal, in these terms as you ut it now I would say the second machine playing the second best move has more chances, but even so it is not very clear for me. The word "best" is tricky, to begin with, because it presumes a certain quality of that first and even of the "second" best move. Nevertheles, there are positions where you have, say, only two legal moves to play and the second "best" is just awful, losing one. And there are positions where you only get the draw or win with one move, the very best. Any other is louzy because you dores not win. On the other side, there are positions where you lose with just one second best move. It is the experience of every expet player or so -as in my case- against computers, where we do not lose becaue a clearly bad move, but because a couple of second o third rate moves in a critical moment. Besides, what is best? Just what seems to be so inside the horizon of analysis of the progam looking ahead from a position. Once I wrote a long analysis -with some maths- to give credence to tha idea that, for a program, to play ever his best move was less good than to play the second or third best. The core of the argument was this: If the program is not God or even kaspay, then by definition his algorythms are not the best and so the best move he evaluate as such is only some times the really best one. On the other side, to select ramdomly between, say, two or thee moves, would give the program a chance to liberate himself of the limnits of his own programming. Oh God, this is a complicated issue. My best Fernando
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