Author: John Merlino
Date: 13:20:42 10/25/01
Go up one level in this thread
On October 25, 2001 at 12:02:29, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On October 25, 2001 at 06:37:00, Mike Hood wrote: > >>There have been a lot of posts (over the years) about how to make engines >>weaker. This is an interesting question that I'd like to revive. I mean, it's >>not just about getting to the top of the SSDF list. Very few people who buy a >>current chess program at its full unleashed power stand a chance of even drawing >>against it. It's a matter of playing enjoyable (and instructive) chess in your >>spare time. >> >>I'm disappointed with most of the handicap levels in chess programs. Everything >>from "Drunken Assassin" to "Paranoid Scaredycat" delivers poor chess, making >>stupid blunders that anyone with an ELO rating over 1000 can take advantage of. >>The only successful handicapping that I've seen is limiting the ply depth of the >>search. Limiting the ply search of an engine to 4 (or maybe 6) ply leads to the >>engine playing solid but beatable chess. Maybe I'm just speaking from my own >>limited perspective as a 1550 player, but I have the impression that the >>blunders made by a plydepth-limited engine are very "human". > >I don't think this works. I ran some tests on one of the chess servers once >with a very limited search depth and still saw ratings of over 2200 at times. > >Bruce ran a version of Ferret on ICC with a time limit of milliseconds per >move and it too was in the 2200 range if I recall correctly. > >The problem is that against weaker players, even shallow searches see through >their simple tactics, and you _still_ have the full positional evaluation of >the program, with weak squares, pawn structure, king safety, etc. to guide the >program. > >If you reduce the search depth, you only reduce tactics. You won't find a >1200 player that understands much about pawn majorities, weak pawns, king >safety, etc. You end up with a program that is tactically weaker, but still >positionally very strong. And (IMHO) it just doesn't "feel right". IE weak >players will let me wreck their pawn structure where a shallow search program >will not. We have found this also to be the case with Chessmaster. There are a few personalities that are identical to the Chessmaster personality, but have a VERY limited search depth. Vlad has a search depth of 3, and his rating came out to approximately 1850. Max has a depth of 2, with a rating of around 1600. And Lacey (the bane of all existence) has a depth of 1, with a rating of around 1300. So, I would estimate that a search depth of 5 would be approximately in the 2200 range that you mention above. Does that come close to matching your findings? jm
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