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

Author: Tony Werten

Date: 07:30:15 02/06/02

Go up one level in this thread


On February 06, 2002 at 10:08:25, Sune Fischer wrote:

>On February 06, 2002 at 09:57:12, Tony Werten wrote:
>
>>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
>
>So it would seem, but the search is exponential and not linear.
>I think you should not consider the "depth" but rather the number of nodes
>searched.

Doesn't make a difference. Depth and number of nodes are the "same".

>If you go one ply deeper then (assuming your branch factor (BF) is not too depth
>dependent) you a factor of BF more nodes, this ratio is fairly constant so I'd
>go with Uri's definition.

Ok, have it your way. in 4-3 you give BF/3BF advantage and in 5-4 you give
BF/4BF advantage.

The ratio is constant, but the added percentage isn't.

New example: distance 100 miles.
10 Mph=> 10 h
20 Mph=>  5 h
30 Mph=>  3.3 h
40 Mph=>  2.5 h

New paper. Diminishing returns in carspeed ?

Tony

>
>The diminishing returns issue is probably an effect of converging towards the
>ideal move as often as possible.
>
>-S.



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