Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 16:58:09 05/05/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 05, 2002 at 19:25:07, stuart taylor wrote:
>I mean, where are we? I cannot make it out yet.
>Can we safely say that a top program of today can beat all programs from before
>1996, i.e. 1995 and below?
Year of release?
Wrong thinking.
What you need to consider is the number of years the programmer has spent
actively working on his program.
That gives much better figures.
Genius 5 is a program of 1996, but it represents approximately 15 years of hard
work by Richard Lang.
Now consider an amateur program of 2002, on which the programmer works since
1996.
Are you going to compare 1996 and 2002 and decide that the 2002 program is
probably better?
I see this reasonning very often on this message board, and that's why I want to
point out that it is a really a very bad one.
> Which program, and if so, can we say that it is due
>to true chess understanding and correctness, or just due to greater power to
>calculate all the tactics? And even THAT maybe not, because even that might only
>be due to seeing the extra ply or so.
> But what about true chess knowledge? I mean long-term planning, and playing for
>minute advantages etc?
"Knowledge" in the sense of positional evaluation (that's what most people think
about when they talk about knowledge) makes for 10% of the strength of a chess
program.
Chess is 90% about tactics (which is a concept close to "search").
Naturally there is also a good deal of chess "knowledge" in a good search, but
it is really different from what most people generally consider to be
"knowledge".
However, positional knowledge (evaluation) makes for 90% of the playing style of
a chess program, which is the only thing people can judge without playing
hundreds of games.
> Can any prgram of today beat all programs until a certain year, due to that
>knowledgs alone?
>
>I feel that if a 1995 program can beat a top program of today in even one game,
>that means that there are aspects which that older program knows better than the
>new one, or why else would it win?
A program (or human player BTW) can win without understanding why.
You should definitely forget about drawing conclusions on ONE game.
Christophe
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