Author: Uri Blass
Date: 11:17:51 05/07/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 07, 2002 at 07:44:16, Amir Ban wrote: >On May 06, 2002 at 18:06:47, Christophe Theron wrote: > >>On May 06, 2002 at 15:34:01, Amir Ban wrote: >> >>>On May 05, 2002 at 19:58:09, Christophe Theron wrote: >>> >>>> >>>>"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"). >>>> >>> >>>Before strongly disagreeing (as I guess I will), what does this mean ? >>> >>>If I freeze my search engine and work only to improve the evaluation, how much >>>do you expect the total strength to improve ? Is it limited ? >> >> >>I expect the strength of your engine to improve, but not much in regard to the >>energy invested. Because you are going to focus your efforts on an area that >>does not have the biggest potential in strength. >> >>On the other hand people will love it more and more because it will have a much >>better playing style. >> >>People can forgive gross tactical blunders, but not slight positional mistakes. >>Go figure... >> >>Here I'm talking about current top engines of today, naturally. >> >>Building a chess engine with a broken evaluation to demonstrate that a better >>evaluation could improve it tremendously is not in the spirit of my idea. >> >> >> >>>I understand that you are saying that it will change the style but overall >>>strength will not be much changed. >> >> >>I do not know exactly how far we will be able to go with the 10% I attribute to >>positional evaluation. >> >>I'm not saying it counts for nothing and that overall strength will not benefit >>from research in this area. >> >>I believe that the positional evaluation is the part of a chess program >>responsible for only 10% of the strength, and that the rest is done by the >>search. >> >>I believe that the positional evaluation is responsible for most of what people >>perceive as the "playing style". >> >>Now you can strongly disagree, I do not have the absolute truth. >> > >Ok. I think this is wrong. Anyway I'm working for a long time under the >assumption that it's the evaluation rather than the search that needs work. > >The search engine of Junior7 is basically the same as Junior6. > >Junior5 was the last engine where I did extensive work on the search. Since then >in terms of effort it was at least 80% evaluation, no more than 20% search. > >Amir I wonder how much of it is testing to find the right weights in your evaluation and how much of it is adding new evaluation functions. I find that in the endgame there is knowledge in the evaluation that Junior does not have when part of the top programs and even part of the amaturs have it. Here is one example: Junior7 does not know that the following position is a draw [D]k7/8/8/8/p7/P7/PK3B2/8 w - - 0 1 Uri
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