Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Comparision of Ply Depth verses Rating Performance

Author: James Swafford

Date: 11:23:35 08/09/02

Go up one level in this thread


On August 09, 2002 at 12:06:35, Jim Monaghan wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Comparision of Ply Depth verses Rating Performance
>
>I understand this has been done before and probably much better. Anyway, I ran
>the IQ test as Bill suggested. Working with average ply depth instead of time,
>makes the table more universally applicable to different programs and hardware.
>Again there is nothing absolute about the rating numbers -- it's the differences
>that are important. By pumping it through Yace 0.99.56 at ascending ply depths I
>came up with the following table:
>
>Cel 1.3 Ghz/256 (32 MB HT)
>
>Ave Depth	Found 		Percent		IQ elo 		Rating Gain
>(Plys)		(Total=360)			(Max=2764)	(Difference)
>
>5		159		44.17		2094		--
>6		206		57.22		2251		157
>7		241		66.94		2367		116
>8		271		75.28		2467		100
>9		288		80.00		2524		57
>10		308		85.56		2591		67
>11		315		87.50		2614		23
>
>
>The tree really explodes at 12 ply on a lot of these positions and would take a
>huge amount of time. I would expect very little gain in performance anyway.
>Knowing (or assuming) that the relationship between ply depth and rating
>performance is a lograthmic function, I wonder if a mathematician here can
>extrapolate this table working with columns 1 and 5. Hopefully there is enough
>of a trend. The rating gain going from ply 8 to ply 9 is either a little low at
>57, or the gain from ply 9 to ply 10 is a little high at 67, or both. The chart
>could perhaps step a little better, but I'm reporting it as directly as it came
>out. Maybe the table can be smoothed out for projection purposes. What would the
>expected gain be going from ply 11 to 12, ply 12 to ply 13, etc? Is there a
>ceiling? In a theoretical sense, I guess there isn't a ceiling -- but
>practically when you consider time spent to achieve higher plys, there might as
>well be. Interesting ...

That's very interesting, and pretty much in line with what I would expect.
About your comment concerning "no ceiling": I think you should expect
a rating ceiling.  At some depth you could tactically solve the game
(i.e. as a tablebase), and more depth would give no more benefit.  So,
at some depth, rating is "maximized".

Just nitpicking. :)

Good work, thanks!
--
James




>
>Cheers,
>Jim



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.