Author: Slater Wold
Date: 14:29:28 10/05/01
Go up one level in this thread
On October 05, 2001 at 14:00:26, Dann Corbit wrote: >On October 05, 2001 at 13:41:12, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >>On October 05, 2001 at 01:33:34, Slater Wold wrote: >> >>>On October 05, 2001 at 00:44:23, Dann Corbit wrote: >>> >>>>Clearly b6+ and Be3 both win. >>>> >>>>The only question I have is, does Kb3 also win, and if not, why not? >>> >>>I believe from your posts, and Crafty's eval, Kb3 also wins. Crafty shows a 4+ >>>pawn advatange even with Kb3. But I don't believe it's the quickest way, or the >>>best move. But I do believe it wins. >>> >>>It's like going to the grocery store. You have 3 means of getting there: >>> >>>Helicopter: b6+ >>> >>>Car: Be3 >>> >>>Walking: Kb3 >>> >>>Which would you choose? I have no doubts walking will get you there, as I have >>>no doubt Kb3 wins. :) >>> >>> >>> >>>Slate >> >>This is sounding like a crappy problem that should either be ignored or set so >>that all three of those moves are taken as solutions. >> >>The problem is that you can't tell in many cases if the program sees a win, so >>you could give a wrong program credit for being right, and vice versa. > >I agree with your assessment. >I think (in particular) some EPD chess problems are simply bad problems. >For instance, there may be 3 ways to win, and so there are 3 solutions. But one >of the 3 ways might look good in the first 6 plies, then look really bad for 4 >more plies, and suddenly a solution appears through a surprise at ply 11. So, >some program makes it 5 plies, and answers with "the right answer" at ply 5 with >an eval of -192 and adds one to the score. > >Ideally, a test problem should: >1. Not be stupendously easy. 3 ply solutions are not worth the bother. >2. Not be stupendously hard. All day solutions are not pragmatically useful. >3. Have a single *clear* answer that is found after a fairly difficult search >of at least one second but not more than ten minutes. (There could be special >case sets that take days to solve, but they won't help you to improve your chess >program much. Only to know that you have improved it after the fact). > >The very best problems are those that can be proven -- the solution move wins >and other moves lose. Probably, there are very few of these problems known. Dann if you believe all this, then I think it's time to move on from WAC. 80% of WAC's problems can be solved in 3 seconds. 19% can be solved in 30 seconds. And 1% cannot be solved in 100,000 seconds. Perhaps that 19% should be focused on, while the others are of no meaning, to most anyway. GCP and I just went through his EPD, and any problem that had 2 solutions, was removed. Any problem that had a transposition into the winning line, was removed. There are probably still some left, but most have been removed. If anyone ever gets serious about it, I would donate my computer for 14 hours a day to crunch positions, to come up with a "standard" EPD. WAC is not a challenge anymore, and perhaps those developing chess programs now with the goal of solving all the WAC problems, are not striving hard enough. It's like running a mile in under an hour. That's *not* an accomplishment. IMO. Slate
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