Author: Uri Blass
Date: 22:29:15 08/29/01
Go up one level in this thread
On August 29, 2001 at 23:15:52, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On August 29, 2001 at 16:35:15, Otello Gnaramori wrote: > >>On August 29, 2001 at 15:43:32, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>Top programs of today _still_ seem to be unable to understand >>>simple chess concepts like the pawn majority we have been discussing in another >>>thread. I discovered, by bits and pieces, some of the knowledge in deep >>>thought, and it was not "small" at all. Everyone assumes that the micros are >>>much smarter... and that us old supercomputer guys simply depended on raw speed >>>to win games. If you look at the game Cray Blitz vs Joe Sentef, from 1981, >>>you will find a position that many programs today will blow, and that programs >>>of 5 years ago would totally blow (bishop + wrong rook pawn ending knowledge). >>>We weren't "fast and dumb" at all. Neither was DT, DB or DB2. Fast, yes. But >>>definitely not "dumb". The "intelligence" of todays programs is mostly myth >>>brought on by fast hardware that searches deep enough to cover for some of the >>>positional weakness the programs have. >>> >>> >> >>From the above statement it seems that no significative advancements were made >>in computer chess since then... are you sure that is a realistic conclusion ? >> >>with best regards. > > >Since DT's time? I would say that is realistic. There have been small >qualitative improvements in the micro programs, to be sure. But things that >I was doing in 1992 are _still_ not done in many programs. The pawn majority >discussion is just one example. I saw a lot of gaes of deep thought and I never saw a position when this was relevant for the game so I think that this knowledge is not the important knowledge and the important knowledge is how to play the middlegame. I also checked some games of Deep thought and found that in the tactical positions Deep fritz is simply better and there are cases when it can avoid the blunders of deep thought. I do not talk only about the repetition bug. I saw good moves of deep thought that programs of 1992 could not find but I do not know about good moves of deep thought that Deep Fritz cannot find(I did not analyze all games so there may be but the fact that I found only blunders of deep thought and not impressive moves of deep thought from Deep fritz's point of view suggest that Deep thought was not strong). I saw cases when Deep Fritz can avoid blunders of Deep thought and I do not mean only to positional blunders but also to tactical blunders when Deep Fritz like the move of Deep thought after few seconds or few minutes but changes it's mind leter when the time of finding the right move or the time of failing law is enough to avoid the blunder at tournament time control. > >I've said this _many_ times in the past... I don't believe there have been >more than a small number of "revolutionary" ideas in computer chess in the last >35 years. Hashing was certainly one. Perhaps null-move another although it >is not clear that you must use null-move to be competitive as Rebel shows (and >the DT/DB/DB2 machines as well). Iterative deepening with full-width search >is another. Extensions are collectively another one, some more-so than others. >Perhaps EGTBs is the most recent one. Everything else has been slow, methodical >progress, something many won't like to hear. Part of the progress has been due >to incremental changes to chess engines/evaluations/etc, part has been due to >the hardware speed advances. Probably more of the latter than the former, if >the truth is known... I think that advances in software from Genius2 to Deep Fritz is more than 200 elo at tournament time control. Uri
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