Author: James Swafford
Date: 09:58:13 01/16/02
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On January 16, 2002 at 11:43:59, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On January 16, 2002 at 07:41:28, Graham Laight wrote: > >>It has occurred to me that it is wrong to evaluate a position in terms of >>relative pawns (the "de facto" standard - whereby an evaluation of 2 means that >>you're approximately the equivalent of 2 pawns ahead). >> >>This means that many aspects of evaluation have to be squeezed into a dimension >>which is not appropriate at all. >> >>A better way would be to evaluate "winning probability". If a position was a >>draw, the value would be 0.50 (or 50%). If the player should win 3 out of 4 >>times, the eval should be 75%. If the player must win from here, then the >>evaluation should be 100%. >> >>It seems strange when you think about it that all programmers have chosen to >>adopt the traditional "pawn equivalence" standard. >> >>-g > > >It is harder to do otherwise. IE KPP vs K is winning, except for some rare >cases, while KR vs KB is drawn. > >It would be very hard to translate some sort of material imbalance into a >winning percentage. As a general rule, the more material you are ahead, the >better your chances, with some exceptions that many engines know about... Right, but the gains are not linear, and raw scores from an evaluator typically are. Winning probability is not a linear function of material + positional advantages. -- James
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