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Subject: Re: SSDF oddity

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 10:34:09 10/07/01

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On October 07, 2001 at 13:11:56, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On October 07, 2001 at 02:36:52, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On October 06, 2001 at 21:23:38, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>
>>>I was thinking about some linear equivalence between depth and "knowledge"
>>>(evaluation), very much like e=mc^2.
>>>
>>>But this is too far stretched at this time.
>>>
>>>One basic fact that supports my point is, and I think Bob described the
>>>phenomenon himself some time ago, that improving the knowledge (evaluation) of a
>>>program is especially needed when the program cannot reach high depths.
>>>
>>>He talked about this about the older version of Cray Blitz of whatever was
>>>before Cray Blitz.
>>>
>>>I have noticed the same thing, and this is the basis of my belief that there are
>>>dimishing returns from improved knowledge.
>>>
>>>This goes against the already old urban legend saying that "more knowledged
>>>programs" (programs with slower evaluations) will be superior on faster
>>>computers (which is clearly denied year after year).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>    Christophe
>>
>>I think that it depends on the knowledge and there is knowledge that cannot be
>>replaced practically by search depth because you need to search more than 30
>>plies forward.
>>
>>Suppose that a program that has no knowledge about king safety plays against
>>program with knowledge about kingsafety.
>>
>>At small depth it is not going to be important because tactical mistakes are
>>going to dominate and searching 1 ply deeper than the opponent may be more
>>important.
>>
>>At big depthes it is going to be more important because the program with more
>>knowledge is going to have enough depth to play for a sound king attack without
>>tactical mistakes and 1 ply is not going to help the program without knowledge
>>about king safety because there are moves that in order to see that they are bad
>>(not for king safety reasons) you need to search at least 30 plies forward.
>>
>>Uri
>
>
>
>...And on the other hand, if you can search 30 plies forward, your knowledge
>about king safety is probably going to be useless.

The point here is that for the near future you cannot search 30 plies
forward.(Even at correspondence time control I get only 20 plies)

I talk about the practical case and I believe that in this case knowledge about
king safety becomes more important when the depth is bigger.

>Because it does not matter if you know how to build a king attack or not, your
>opponent can see deep enough anyway to see the consequences just by calculating.

I think that there are cases when 30 plies are not going to be enough to see the
consequences and you need more than it.

>
>I don't think it is possible to "solve" this problem by thinking from a theoric
>point of view, because you can find extreme examples to support both sides.

When I said 30 plies I did not think about an extreme example.

Uri



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