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Subject: Re: Is the Depth directly proportional to the program's strength? (YES!)

Author: Tony Werten

Date: 06:57:12 02/06/02

Go up one level in this thread


On February 06, 2002 at 09:13:40, Uri Blass wrote:

>On February 06, 2002 at 08:42:00, Tony Werten wrote:
>
>>On February 03, 2002 at 17:25:48, Wylie Garvin wrote:
>>
>>>On February 03, 2002 at 13:32:42, William H Rogers wrote:
>>>
>>>>Here is an item from Chess Skill in Man and Machine
>>>>One of the first programs written for computers and later turned into Deep Blue
>>>>well, I least I think that it lead to Deep Blue.
>>>>The ran a series of 300 games, playing the program against itself with only
>>>>different ply settings to see the difference in playing strength.
>>>>Here are the results:
>>>>
>>>>    Rate  P4    P5    P6    P7    P8    P9
>>>>P4  1235  --    5.0          .5    0     0
>>>>P5  1570  15   --    3.5    3.0   .5     0
>>>>P6  1826  19.5 16.5  ---    4.0  1.5    1.5
>>>>P7  2031  20   17    16     ---  5.0    4.0
>>>>P8  2208  20   19.5  18.5  15.0  ---    5.5
>>>>P9  2328  20   20    18.5  16.0 14.5    ---
>>>>
>>>>As you can see in the lower ply numbers the program gained the most strenght,
>>>>but as the ply level got higher the rating increase became smaller and smaller.
>>>>It would be nice to see some math on a curve to estimate the over all effects.
>>>>Bill
>>>
>>>Hi,
>>>   There's a 1997 paper by Schaeffer et. al. that refutes the idea that the
>>>increase in strength is constant per ply at high search depths.  They suggest
>>>that there are diminishing returns for deeper search, and that previous research
>>>didn't reveal it simply because chess programs make lots of evaluation mistakes.
>>
>>They are wrong. Suppose my program does get twice as strong with every extra
>>ply. How are you going to measure it ?
>>
>>We play 10 games. First I win 1, then I win 2, then 4, then 8. Quite impossible
>>for me to keep improving at this level !
>
>No
>This is not the way to check.
>
>do a match between your program and itself
>
>4 plies against 3 plies
>5 plies against 4 plies
>6 plies against 5 plies....
>
>If you find that the result at big depthes is closer to 50% then it means that
>there is an evidence for diminishing returns.

Maybe. It might mean the deeper searching program gains less, it might also mean
that the difference is smaller.

in 4-3 the deeper program searches 33% deeper than the shallow one. In 6-5
that's only 20%. Sounds logical to me that 4-3 should score more than 6-5. It
has (IMO) nothing to do with diminishing returns. If 8-6 scores worse than 4-3
then I'd agree.

Tony

>
>Note that diminishing return should happen after enough plies because after
>enough plies because it is impossible to play better than the best moves so
>after enough plies the program is going to practically solve chess.
>
>The only question is not if there is diminishing returns but how many plies do
>you need to find diminishing returns.
>
>It may be also interesting to know what is the situation in other games like go.
>
>Uri



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