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Subject: Re: Closest link between a statistic and playing strength

Author: Sune Larsson

Date: 23:03:52 12/06/01

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On December 07, 2001 at 01:06:55, Russell Reagan wrote:

>There are all kinds of statistics that you can formulate about a chess program,
>the most notable being nodes per second. What statistic *should* imply a
>stronger program? Obviously NPS is nice, but it's certainly not something you
>can use to say that one program is stronger than another. I'm thinking that
>number of plys would be a better indicator of strength, and I toyed with the
>idea of some kind of nodes/ply kind of statistic.
>
>The nodes/ply statistic obviously would give different results in different
>positions, but for testing your own program, it seems like a good tool. For
>example, if you did an 8 ply search and searched N nodes without the use of a
>transposition table, and after implementing the transposition table you only
>searched N/2 nodes (I have no idea what the actual gain would be) then that's
>obviously good. Then again, that indirectly implies a deeper search, which makes
>this statistic boil down to plys/sec (in the same position of course, with the
>same program, otherwise results would vary widely).
>
>Any ideas about other statistics or comments about my thoughts I've thrown out
>here?
>
>Russell


In short, I think the evals, the knowledge, is the pudding. Searching 17 plies
knowing nothing - well, is like not getting much out of any position. Except for
highly tactical ones.

Sune



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