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Subject: Re: Sacrifices of chess programs

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 13:19:14 11/08/01

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On November 08, 2001 at 15:35:16, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On November 08, 2001 at 12:43:23, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On November 08, 2001 at 11:04:59, Mark Young wrote:
>>
>>>On November 08, 2001 at 10:20:37, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>
>>>>I define a real sacrifice of chess program as a move that is losing material
>>>>based on only material evaluation but is played by the program because the
>>>>positional score is bigger than a pawn.
>>>
>>>Most of the Real sacs I have seen are based on mating attacks. Do you define
>>>this as a real sacrifice?
>>
>>If the program can see the mate or can see material that it get I define it as a
>>combination and not as a real sacrifice
>>
>>The test if it is a real sacrifice can be done by a materialistic program with
>>good search rules(positional scores always lower than 0.5 pawn so we can know
>>the material score based on the score of the program).
>>
>>If the materialistic program can only see that the sacrifice is losing material
>>even after a long search then it is clearly a real sacrifice.
>
>I think by your definition, a chess sacrifice by a computer would be where the
>positional score is more than a pawn (piece?) even though the material goes
>negative.  I have seen lots of things like this in Crafty, but it is usually
>only a pawn or so rather than a full piece.  So I guess those are really
>gambits, rather than sacrifices.
>
>Colin's program Beowulf can have some very large positional scores.  If you look
>at the code where board control is computed, you will see that a single simple
>aspect like that can be worth much more than a pawn.
>
>Probably all good programs would "sacrifice" under this definition, given the
>right circumstances.  I say that because if you have a material only eval, the
>moves chosen will be wildly different from a good eval plan.

programs with positional scores that are smaller than 1/2 pawn are not going to
sacrifice by my defintion when I define material score by the following
values(pawn=1 ,knight=bishop=3,rook=5,queen=9)

I agree that all the top programs are going to sacrifice by my definition but
the question is still which program sacrifices more.

I remember that I read that Junior sacrifices more than Hiarcs when Fritz is in
the middle.

  In fact, any
>program that uses material only eval is sure to lose to any decent chess
>program.
>
>A clear, numerical definition of what you mean by sacrifice would help, I think.
>
>Another interesting test would be to take a dozen "classical" sacrifices by
>Morphy, Fischer, Tal, whatever, and run them through computer programs.  See
>which programs make the same moves (if any).  I suspect that sometimes what we
>perceive as a sacrifice by a great player was a very deep tactic, which the
>superGM saw all along.

It is also possible that from the point of view of the player a move was a
sacrifice but computers can find it because from their point of view it is
tactics.

I think that an objective definition is to take a good program with mainly
material evaluation(we only need maximal positional score that is smaller than
1/2 pawn) and if this program believe based on evaluatiion that it was a
sacrifice then we define it as a sacrifice

We can give the mainly material program to search for 10 minutes the position
before the move and the position after the move to decide if the move was a
sacrifice.

Uri



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