Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 15:10:08 07/31/02
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On July 30, 2002 at 22:43:36, James Swafford wrote: > >Hey everyone. I'm at an AAAI conference in Edmonton. It's ironic (to me) >that it's been mentioned here recently that Edmonton is a hive of computer >chess enthusiasts. I don't know if that's true (what's a "hive"? :-), but >there are certainly a few... > >Now to my question. I asked Jonathon Schaeffer today (who is a really >nice guy, IMO) some questions about his experience with TD learning >algorithms. He's (co?)published a paper entitled (something like) >"Temporal Difference Learning in High Performance Game Playing." I >thought the title was a bit misleading, because he focused on checkers. >Checkers programs have much smaller evaluation fuctions than chess >programs, obviously. I asked him if he thought the TDLeaf(Lambda) >algorithm had potential in high calibre chess. (Yes, yes, I know >all about Knightcap... but that wasn't quite "high" calibre.) >He responded with a very enthusiastic "yes". He said "I'll never manually >tune another evaluation function again." And he'll never do a competative chessprogram again either, he forgot to add that too. >A natural follow up question (which I also asked) is -- then why isn't >everyone doing it?? I don't _believe_ (and maybe I'm wrong about this) >that any top ranked chess programs use it. His response was simply: >"There's a separation between academia and industry." Schaeffer stated Schaeffer is well known for his good speeches and answers :) >that perhaps the programmers of top chess programs don't believe in >the potential of temporal difference algorithms in the chess domain. >Or, perhaps, they don't want to put the effort into them. >I believe Crafty is the strongest program in academia now. If not, >certainly among the strongest. So, Bob -- have you looked at TDLeaf >and found it wanting? It's interesting (and perplexing) to me that >paper after paper praises the potential of TDLeaf, but it's _yet_ to >be used in the high end programs. Knightcap was strong, but it's >definitely not in the top tier. I remember Knightcap very well. TD learning had the habit to slowly make it more aggressive until it was giving away a piece for 1 pawn and a check. Then of course the 'brain was cleared' and experiment restarted. So in short the longer the program used the TD learning the worse it would play, from my viewpoint. Definitely from a chessplayers viewpoint it did. Of course we must not forget that in the time it played online, that nearly no program was very aggressive. So doing a few patzer moves was a good way to get from perhaps scoring 11% to 12% or so. >Maybe Tridgell/Baxter quit to soon, and Knightcap really could've been >a top tier program. Or maybe the reason nobody is using TD is because >it's impractical for the large number of parameters required to be >competitive in chess. Or maybe Schaeffer was right, and the commercial >guys just aren't taking TD seriously. > >Thoughts? > >-- >James
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