Author: Mike S.
Date: 17:22:51 02/03/02
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On February 03, 2002 at 19:02:06, Gordon Rattray wrote: >(...) >My opinion is based on the fact that I don't think it is unreasonable for a >programmer to rely on an opening book. The same applies to endgame tablebases. >I accept that other people are interested in a program's performance without >such pre-computed knowledge. That's fair enough, but I myself don't view it as >being unfair or false. Yes, I also don't think this is unfair at all. It's very reasonable to include (human) opening knowledge that way, which offers opening play at high level for the user and tries to provide the achieveable maximum of strength during the opening for the program. I think though, the doubt in too large books generated from databases, is very common. These books are probably 90% practise book, not theory books. Since the programs have become so strong nowadays, I assume that they could improve a lot of the lines they are forced to play from the book, at least at longer time controls, or play alternatives which fit their style better. But these are only guesses. Also, the advantage of using endgame databases is obvious - although here there are some practical problems (i.e. slowdown effect when accessed during the search, missing knowledge if user doesn't install tablebases). I have seen improvement in tbs use lately, i.e. some programs avoid the incomplete problem, some progs use evaluation tricks in addition to the database evals to avoid "ugly" waste of material (which doesn't matter against a program, but may miss defence chances against imperfectly playing humans). I won't repeat my usual remark of the old Mchess idea (to make database useage more flexible), because nobody except me seems to be interested in that anymore. The baseline of my opinion is: Databases are useful and perfectly ok, as long as attention is paid to possible problems (and to avoid them as good as possible), and as long as it is kept in mind what the average user wants (and not only what will bring maximum comp-comp performance). Regards, M.Scheidl
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