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Subject: Re: Deep Blue--Part III

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 09:01:00 05/11/98

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On May 11, 1998 at 10:15:15, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>
>On May 11, 1998 at 09:46:09, Amir Ban wrote:
>
>>On May 11, 1998 at 08:41:11, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>On May 11, 1998 at 07:04:23, Amir Ban wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 10, 1998 at 18:51:35, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>
>>
>>>>
>>>>This position was analyzed much more deeply than this.
>>>>
>>>>After 36.Qb6, Rd8 is indeed best, but DB did not consider it but
>>>>36...Qe7 (I posted the complete analysis recently). After 36... Rd8
>>>>37.axb5, a micro will quickly see that white is in trouble, but after
>>>>36...Qe7 37.axb5, black is a full pawn worse because of the need to
>>>>protect the bishop on d6. Justifying 36.axb5 if you do not consider Rd8
>>>>is more than a few tenth of a pawn to justify, actually it's about a
>>>>full pawn.
>>>>
>>>>Why didn't DB consider Rd8 ? Probably it saw 36. Qb6 Rd8 37.Be4 ! and it
>>>>seems black is screwed. But black has a fantastic resource: 37... a5!
>>>>38.axb5 axb4!! sacing a piece, to get the queen to the first rank and
>>>>force a draw on perpetual threats (echo of the final position, but more
>>>>complicated).
>>>
>>>It is clear that DB didn't see the piece sac, because this line is way
>>>longer
>>>than the 23 ply (Diep needs) to see that Kf1? leads to a draw and Kh1!
>>>wins the game.
>>>
>>
>>Right. A human may play it on a hunch that things will work out,
>>specially if he's desperate.
>>
>>
>>>In the line you posted i see that DB score doesn't get to zero, but
>>>just goes down few tens of a pawn. So that'll be some king safety,
>>>no doubt.
>>>
>>
>>King safety no doubt, but how much ? This was already discussed here
>>last year.
>
>If you look to the final position that Db prints out, then you see that
>the king ain't covered by pawns. In the past i gave this terrible
>penalties.
>
>Also something i still do is: giving freepawns that are covered by a
>pawn
>huge bonuses. It is clear in this game that DB doesn't do this (the fact
>that it played Nf5! is my proof, when i remove some bonuses for
>pawncovered freepawns, then Diep plays Nf5 too).
>
>The both of 2 gives you this result.
>
>>>I was surprised seeing in the lines you posted here that DB just got 11
>>>ply.
>
>>>Although i admit that when i would search fullwidth with SE and all kind
>>>of check/threat extensions i doubt whether i would get more with
>>>around 70 Billion nodes.
>>>
>>
>>Yes. Actually the log says iteration not ply, but my guess is that this
>>is the brute-force ply depth. We are spoiled by null-move depths, but DB
>>don't do that, and they don't believe in pruning either. I think a micro
>>with full width search + regular extensions would just barely reach 8
>>ply in this position. 11 ply is slightly lower than I expect, but
>>remember this is a tough position for DB with the eval going up and down
>>like crazy. Some people suggest you should add 4 ply for the leaf
>>processors, but arithmetic tells me that 15-ply brute force is
>>stretching credulity.
>
>Well if i allow diep to search a night with nullmove turned on, then it
>gets more like 18-20 ply here.
>
>The better your evaluation, the better your branching factor, is the
>experience with Diep, although objectively a branching factor should
>be independant from the evaluation. Guess it has to do with
>that you have a more accurate score for leaves, where programs not
>getting this, have q-search problems: another ply changes score from
><= alfa to >= beta.
>
>So if they say that after this 11 ply they get another 4 ply from the
>processors, then this still says nothing. I get 18 ply easily after a
>night,
>and no extension makes up for that extra positional insight.
>
>Also in all these positions you can correctly nullmove, because there
>are
>no threats that cannot be seen, assuming you do checks in your q-search.
>
>>Amir

This is baloney.  I suppose you are ready to sit down and play someone
like Karpov a match, and thoroughly trounce him?  Because "his selective
search extensions can in no way compensate for the extra plies of
full-width
you get over him?"

That's silly.  To characterize Crafty, I generally hit 12-13 plies in
the
middlegame of a 40/2 game, using my 4 processor machine.  I search to an
average depth during those 12 ply iterations of maybe 18-20 plies.  This
counts the many paths that are extended, plus the captures tacked on to
the end.

DB goes about 10 plies deeper on average.  Still 11-12-13 plies
depending
on the position, but their extensions are *much* more significant
fraction
of their total search than mine are.  Since you haven't played them
ever,
your comments are forgivable.  But once you have played against them,
you
realize *just how much more they are seeing than you do*... by watching
when *they* fail high, then seeing how many full moves before *you* fail
high.  Remember the bishop trap against Cray Blitz in 1989, where they
saw
it 10 full *moves* before CB did.  And in 1989 CB was *not* slow by any
standard of measure.

In Cape May, *Socrates was out-searching them by 1-2 plies, yet when it
got "interesting" they saw something maybe 10 moves before *socrates*
did,
because they were searching deeply along the *right* paths.  They search
deeply along lots of wrong paths to be sure, but they have the
horsepower
to get away with that where we can't...

But they are *most impressive* when you sit across from them and watch
*their* output and *your* output.  And you realize just how "small" your
search tree is compared to theirs...



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