Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

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

Author: Sune Fischer

Date: 17:08:04 02/06/02

Go up one level in this thread


On February 06, 2002 at 19:14:43, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On February 06, 2002 at 18:54:28, Sune Fischer wrote:
>[snip]
>>I'm not saying that it would be easy to get all those test positions, but if you
>>had them the test would be nice.
>>I suppose one could do a 14 ply search as an approximation to the best move, it
>>wouldn't change the distribution all that much I think.
>
>The problem (as I see it) of running test suites with only ce answers is that
>the chess engine will [not infrequently] find a better solution or another
>solution which is marked as "wrong" by the program looking for an answer.
>
>If you have not traced all the way to checkmate, then the best answer is not
>certain.


Listen, the idea is very simple :)

A) We have X positions where we _know_ the best move.
(of cause we can discuss how to get such a set of positions, but that wasn't
really the point here, it is an *assumtion*, a mind/thought experiment if you
will :)

B) Run the engine brute force limitet to n ply.
This will produce the previous posted distribution.

C) How to interpret this distribution:
The 1-ply searcher will often pick the right move, but for the *wrong* reasons
in the sense that it cannot see the deeper tacticks.
My point is, that this does not matter, because it will still play the *right*
move! Pure luck, but that is okay.
So the distribution should IMO reflect the chances of *being lucky*.
The deeper you search, the more often you will pick the right move.
Remember that even a 12 ply search is still making a guess at the right move
just as the 1 ply searcher did, but more often the 12-ply'er guesses right.

I haven't got any idea as to how fast the distribution converges or what kind of
distribution we might be talking about, but interesting to find out I think.

-S.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.