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Subject: Re: test position(king safety)

Author: Dieter Buerssner

Date: 13:55:26 10/25/01

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On October 25, 2001 at 15:39:19, Uri Blass wrote:

[Much snipped]
>Usually king safety test positions are positions when the sacrifice is correct
>and this is the reason that I chose position when the sacrifice is wrong.

I think, this is a very interesting point, that bothered me for some time. Many
test positions start with a sacrifice. I think, it is easy to overtune an engine
because of this. For example, I have seen that Yace gets sometimes much better
results with a higher value for a pawn. But in normal games, I will see more bad
trades than. Also rather aggressive search extensions can often help, while it
might hurt in normal games.

Test-suites like the one posted here by Jon Dart, with many "avoid move"
problems might be better suited. Of course, this has other problems. The engine
might choose another bad move, and this might not be easily detected. Giving a
list of all good move will not be easy or debatable. But in practice probably
many engines will have similar good looking but wrong ideas, and so the avoid
move type of postions should work well.

Of course, often the engine will be just lucky and solve just positions
extremely fast, without detecting any problem with move to avoid. But with many
positions, this should level out.

Regards,
Dieter




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