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Subject: Re: static evaluation: alpha-beta-Evaluation Functions

Author: Alessandro Damiani

Date: 10:37:19 04/14/02

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Hi Vincent,

You too much concentrated on the game Mawari. I think they choose Mawari to have
a simple framework to experiment with. I guess a Mawari engine is far simpler
than a Chess one. So, forget Mawari. :)

You are right, alpha-beta evaluation functions are like lazy evaluation. But,
the big difference is that an alpha-beta evaluation function is an algorithm
that traverses a classification tree. I have in mind the picture of an ordered
hierarchical structure of position features (a tree of features). At first sight
it seemed to me like that (right, I didn't take the time to read the whole text
:).

We both agree on the bad effect of lazy evaluation on positional play, but an
alpha-beta evaluation function seems to be different: the bounds on a feature's
value range are not estimated.

But maybe I am wrong.

Alessandro


On April 14, 2002 at 11:42:34, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On April 14, 2002 at 04:26:52, Alessandro Damiani wrote:
>
>Seems to me that these idiots never have figured out what already
>has been tried in computerchess world.
>
>Of course i'm not using their 'concept' which already exists
>by the way. These guys are beginners everywhere of course.
>Mawari, every idiot who programs for that game can get
>world champ there of course, or pay levy to get a gold medal...
>...if i may ask...
>
>What works for a 2000 rated chessprogram to experiment
>with doesn't work for todays strong chessprograms simply.
>Mawari programs when compared to chess programs are at 2000
>level of course, relatively seen to how much time and
>effort has been invested in mawari programs.
>
>If i read their abstract well then in fact they define a
>'partial' evaluation, already known under the name
>lazy evaluation using a quick evaluation.
>
>That's a complete nonsense approach. It's pretty much the same like
>lazy evaluation based upon a quick evaluation, it's most likely
>exactly the same, if not 100% similar.
>
>If i would describe here how much time i invested in making
>a quick evaluation which evaluates some rude scores, and which
>with some tuning when to use it and when to not use it, that
>it always scores when used within 3 pawns in 99% of the positions,
>then people would not get happy.
>
>I invested *loads* of time there in the past.
>
>More important, i generated big testcomparisions here to see
>when the quick eval worked and when not. That's why i could
>conclude it didn't work.
>
>Even more unhappy i was when i tested with this concept. Disaster.
>Yes it was faster concept, but here the amazing results
>  - positional weaker
>  - tactical weaker
>
>the first i wasn't amazed about of course, but the second i was.
>i was pretty amazed to find out that these 1% of the evaluations
>where the quick evaluation gave a score but evaluated it wrong,
>really amazing that these evaluations cause a tactical way better
>engine.
>
>Simply majority of tactical testset positions get solved by evaluation
>and NOT by seeing a bit more tactics.
>
>In short it's not working simply to use a lazy evaluation in a program with
>a good evaluation which also has high scores for things like king
>safety.
>
>>Hi all,
>>
>>I am wondering if someone uses "alpha-beta-Evaluation Functions" by Alois P.
>>Heinz and Christophe Hense. Below is the abstract of the text.
>>
>>Alessandro
>>
>>
>>Bootstrap Learning of alpha-beta-­Evaluation Functions
>>Alois P. Heinz Christoph Hense
>>Institut für Informatik, Universität Freiburg, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
>>heinz@informatik.uni­freiburg.de
>>
>>Abstract
>>We propose alpha-beta-­evaluation functions that can be used
>>in game­playing programs as a substitute for the traditional
>>static evaluation functions without loss of functionality.
>>The main advantage of an alpha-beta-­evaluation function is that
>>it can be implemented with a much lower time complexity
>>than the traditional counterpart and so provides a signifi­
>>cant speedup for the evaluation of any game position which
>>eventually results in better play. We describe an implemen­
>>tation of the alpha-beta-evaluation function using a modification
>>of the classical classification and regression trees and show
>>that a typical call to this function involves the computation
>>of only a small subset of all features that may be used to
>>describe a game position. We show that an iterative boot­
>>strap process can be used to learn alpha-beta-­evaluation functions
>>efficiently and describe some of the experience we made
>>with this new approach applied to a game called malawi.



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