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Subject: Re: Will TACTIC's eventually REFUTE! Positional play?

Author: Albert Silver

Date: 04:33:59 01/28/02

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On January 28, 2002 at 07:29:03, Uri Blass wrote:

>On January 28, 2002 at 07:11:05, Albert Silver wrote:
>
>>On January 28, 2002 at 06:58:25, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>On January 28, 2002 at 06:42:25, Albert Silver wrote:
>>>
>>>>On January 28, 2002 at 06:33:26, Amir Ban wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On January 28, 2002 at 06:12:53, Ed Schröder wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>>Will TACTIC's eventually REFUTE! Positional play?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>In the end yes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>It is my (new) opinion that the nature of chess is just search.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Elo progress of (professional) chess programs...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>1990 - elo 2000 (average depth 6-8) (TC 40/2h)
>>>>>>1995 - elo 2300 (average depth 8-10)
>>>>>>2000 - elo 2500 (average depth 11-13)
>>>>>>2002 - elo 2600 (average depth 12-14)
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>This begs the question, because the programs are newer and play positionally
>>>>>different. Will a 1990/1995 program perform 2600+ on today's hardware ?
>>>>>Doubtful.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>No way to stop it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>No suprise Kasparov lost against Deep Blue.
>>>>>
>>>>>It was a surprise because he is clearly better.
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The sad future: it will be in the headlines when a grandmaster occasionally will
>>>>>>win from a computer.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>If this will happen due to positionally outplaying will you also consider it sad
>>>>>?
>>>>>
>>>>>Amir
>>>>
>>>>I don't think he meant it would be sad they won, but that this would be
>>>>considered news. In any case, I'm afraid I agree with him on the nature of
>>>>chess. I think that positional play is just extremely deep and refined tactical
>>>>play. Since we approach them differently, we regard them as different, but that
>>>>is still how I regard them. Notice how already some elements of knowledge that
>>>>were necessary in older programs are removed as the search makes up for it.
>>>
>>>I do not believe in it.
>>>
>>>If it is the case palm tiger should have knowledge that the default tiger does
>>>not have but it is not the case because I remember from christophe's posts that
>>>palm tiger is the same engine that he is using for tournaments except more hash
>>>tables book and better hardware.
>>>
>>>Palm tiger is better than the old programs on similiar hardware and it means
>>>that exactly the same knowledge that is good for today programs can be also good
>>>for old programs.
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>I was speaking about the reverse: knowledge that was necessary or useful in
>>older programs with much more limited hardware but that is not necessary or
>>useful today.
>>

>I understood and my point is that knowledge that was used in palm tiger is also
>necessary for tiger on good hardware and palm tiger is the best for it's
>hardware.
>
>Uri

There used to be knowledge that was deliberately inserted to avoid things such
as giving a piece to play a fork and capture the rook on a1/a8. This was useful
because they always played this (the Mephisto MMIV did IIRC) and lost the second
piece (the knight) a bit after. Today this horizon effect is compensated by the
depth of the search. This is just an example, and I'm sure the programmers could
say more about this.

                                       Albert



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