Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 16:20:25 06/24/98
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On June 24, 1998 at 16:47:40, Don Dailey wrote: >My feelings on speculation: It should be a good thing if done well, >it's all about percentages. Me and Larry have always been >conservative about recognizing compensation for a pawn for instance, >the idea being let's not take a chance on being wrong. But now I >argue that we are STILL taking a chance on being wrong, if we don't >recognize the value of an opponents sacrafice we will error in the >opposite direction. As with many other issues we can discuss, this depends upon what your goals are. I take no issue with what you said. A primary goal in my case is to beat whatever it is I happen to be playing at that moment. So it is my goal to write one engine that plays well against everything, rather than having an engine that has modes that are different based upon what *I* think the characteristics of the opponent are. I have a couple of other goals, which may be related to playing strength, and may not be. I want to play interesting chess, rather than the planless "I'm just going to screw around until you drop a rook" style that I've seen my own program and other programs play in the past. I would also like to amuse my opponents. I figure extreme strength is almost amusing enough, but if my program pressures them severely and makes them crack in 25 moves, they'll probably be really amused. I figure that eventually, this will all end up being about program strength, but at the moment I don't care so much if my attempts to induce active play make the thing a bit weaker. I figure that if someone sees my thing make a move that he doesn't think a computer is capable of, I've achieved a sub-goal of some sort. >So if you are speculative, it should not be wild speculation, but >more in the category of "educated guess" and based on pragmatic >considerations. If done really well you will occasionally be >wrong in either direction. Yeah sure. If you want to sacrifice a pawn, you'd better be able to understand the consequences, because you're going to have to live with them. Some pawn sacrifices are really obvious, and I have seen mine do others that an IM friend labelled as "silly". I think that it is fun to fiddle with, and I supposed that amusing myself is another one of my goals. bruce
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