Author: Chris Carson
Date: 15:39:38 04/29/02
Go up one level in this thread
On April 29, 2002 at 17:21:02, Roy Eassa wrote:
>On April 29, 2002 at 17:13:31, martin fierz wrote:
>
>>On April 29, 2002 at 16:55:45, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On April 29, 2002 at 16:15:27, Roy Eassa wrote:
>>>
>>>>On April 29, 2002 at 15:50:21, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On April 29, 2002 at 13:56:58, Roy Eassa wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>How do longer time controls affect humans and computers?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>For humans, the extra time mainly provides better "debugging" of one's analysis.
>>>>>> It also gives more chances to find different lines and greater depth, but these
>>>>>>are quite secondary for human GMs, IMHO.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>For computers, better debugging is (almost) not an issue. They make no tactical
>>>>>>errors within their horizons. What the extra time gives computers is mainly
>>>>>>greater search depth. But doubling the time does not even add 1 ply usually.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>So, which factor makes the bigger difference, GMs getting debugging that's twice
>>>>>>as good or computers getting less than 1 ply of greater depth?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>When GMs lose to computers, it's *almost always* due to insufficient debugging.
>>>>>>Doubling the time (for example) can make a HUGE difference here.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>When computers lose to GMs, it's *occasionally* due to insufficient depth that
>>>>>>could be cured by doubling the time.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Obviously, both humans and GMs play stronger on an *absolute* scale when given
>>>>>>more time. But I think it's most likely that GMs benefit *proportionally* much
>>>>>>MORE than computers do from the additional time.
>>>>>
>>>>>]
>>>>>It is trivial to test. play some game/1 game/5 game/15 and game/60 games
>>>>>vs the same GM. See what happens. I already know. :)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Trivial? Maybe YOU have a human GM lying around your house, waiting to do this,
>>>>but I don't! ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>>Play such a series of games against _any_ human... the resulting curve will
>>>be roughly the same...
>>
>>dear bob,
>>
>>if you have such numbers, could you please post them? there are people here who
>>believe in things like "humans get tired if they think for a long time" and
>>other crazy stuff like that - i have no numbers to disprove their statements,
>>but i know they are wrong. do me a favor please :-)
>>
>>aloha
>> martin
>
>
>Martin, if you word it that way ("humans get tired if they think for a long
>time") then it's not necessarily wrong and it's not certainly crazy. The
>statement I *would* disagree with would be something more like "GMs gain less
>strength than a computer does at longer time limits because tiredness becomes a
>major factor after x hours" where x is something fairly low like 3 or 4 or 5 (or
>even 6 or 7).
I would agree that humans in general perform better with more time.
However, "mental fatigue" sets in relatively early, even though some may say
they do not feel "mental fatigue". Research on "mental fatigue" has clearly
shown that even with simple mental tasks (this increases rapidly with complex
thinking), mental fatigue increases, cognitive errors increase, performance goes
down in less than 2 hours. Yes, you can train/medicate to reduce the amount of
mental fatigue, however, you can not eliminate it.
Here is one of many research articles on Mental Fatigue, a very highly
researched area:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11037038&dopt=Abstract
Time on task and task switching were shown to diminish "mental fatigue".
Although not a study on chess, this study illustrates the point.
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