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Subject: Re: Hello from Edmonton (and on Temporal Differences)

Author: James Swafford

Date: 19:17:04 08/01/02

Go up one level in this thread


On August 01, 2002 at 22:12:27, James Swafford wrote:

>You're serious? :)
>
>I just got home from Edmonton.  Let me think on this...
>Six months is definitely not doable.  I graduate in December,
>and I've gotta hella course load this Fall.  But I might
>consider a 12 month wager.
>
>If you're serious, let me know, and then let me think on it
>for a day or two. I don't know if I want to take your money yet.
>(Are you talking about "Amateur" ?)

Agh... you said "new player".  You do realize we live 2300-2500
miles apart, right?  I don't live in San Diego anymore. :)
But I'd sure like to visit on your dime...


>
>And yeah, I think open source is fine.
>
>--
>James
>
>BTW... how big is your family? :))
>
>
>On July 31, 2002 at 23:38:56, Will Singleton wrote:
>
>>On July 31, 2002 at 21:33:29, James Swafford wrote:
>>
>>>On July 31, 2002 at 17:49:05, Jay Scott wrote:
>>>
>>>>On July 30, 2002 at 22:43:36, James Swafford wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>why isn't
>>>>>everyone doing it??
>>>>
>>>>In my view, it's because top chess programmers are amazingly conservative. Or to
>>>>look at it more positively, they have a lot of time invested in and knowledge
>>>>gained about their traditional manual methods, and they do not believe in making
>>>>big changes. It's hard to argue with success!
>>>>
>>>>Over the years I've posted a bunch of machine learning suggestions (few of them
>>>>original to me) to rec.games.chess.computer and to this forum. Maybe it's my
>>>>writing style or something, but in every single case the general first reaction
>>>>was to ignore or dismiss the idea. That happened even when I pushed opening book
>>>>learning, which was not used in chess programs at the time but has become common
>>>>since. Arthur Samuels' classic checkers program already used a similar kind of
>>>>rote learning, so nobody should call it a radical new idea, but despite
>>>>seemingly obvious advantages it somehow took decades to show up in chess
>>>>programs.
>>>>
>>>>Another problem is that many of the people who've played around with learning
>>>>algorithms were only playing around. It takes serious knowledge to create a good
>>>>learning program, and different serious knowledge to create a good playing
>>>>program, and you have to have both to get really impressive results. Nobody's
>>>>done it yet.
>>>>
>>>>My advice for those who have great new ideas: Implement them yourself and become
>>>>a smashing success. *That's* convincing. The only problem is that to become a
>>>>smashing success, you'll also have to implement a lot of great old ideas.
>>>
>>>I agree with you.  I have studied TD-Leaf for a while, and I am definitely
>>>going to pursue creating a strong TD chess player.
>>>
>>>One of my biggest concerns was the time to train a complex evaluator.
>>>I spoke with Rich Sutton about this today, and he convinced me that it's
>>>doable.
>>>
>>>--
>>>James
>>
>>James,
>>
>>From my work with checkers, chess and td algorithms, I would have to disagree.
>>I would be thrilled to be proven wrong, but there's better ways to do chess than
>>td learning.  At least for the present.  I suspect it will be a interesting
>>experiment, though.
>>
>>I'll offer a proposition.  I'm working on a new program based on standard,
>>well-known techniques.  I assume from your comments that you are working on a TD
>>chess player.  Six months from now, let's have a match, open source code.  Loser
>>pays for winner's trip (incl family, round-trip) to loser's home city for dinner
>>and drinks.
>>
>>How about it?
>>
>>Will



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