Author: Steve Coladonato
Date: 04:43:52 08/27/02
Go up one level in this thread
On August 26, 2002 at 16:06:55, Russell Reagan wrote: >On August 26, 2002 at 14:01:00, Steve Coladonato wrote: > >>On August 26, 2002 at 09:56:24, José Carlos wrote: >> >><snip> >> >>> Same thing happens in human chess. You prepare an opening. The opponent is >>>well prepared too. You go into your analysis and your opponent comes up with a >>>move you missed. You lost out of book. >>> >>>>Matthias. >>> >>> José C. >> >>That's exactly correct. And at that point it is the skill of the player that >>determines the outcome. Why not allow the skill of the engine to determine the >>outcome by limiting the book depth? > >What if the "skill of the engine" is in learning in the opening? What if it has >tons of lines 40 moves deep, and game after game it learns and prunes away lines >and adds new lines. You, like many others, make the assumption that all chess >programs work exactly the same way. If you make rules about limiting book depth, >eventually you will have people making other rules about "now you do your >searching here, but only to this depth" and what if my program doesn't do any >search at all, but does deeper analysis of the position? Sure, it might not play >as strong as a searcher, but that's not the point. The point is, not all chess >engines work exactly the same, and so it's not right to make rules like this. > >To me saying "limit the book" is like saying, "Fritz has too good of a book and >it affects it's performance and makes it unfair, so let's limit it's book." Why >not use that same logic and make rules like, "Fritz searches too deep and it >makes it unfair. Let's limit the depth that Fritz can search so that now it's >FAIR for everyone." In addition to that, let's make a rule that Frans Morsch can >only work on Fritz for 1 hour a day, because that's just not "fair" if he gets >to work on his engine all day long everyday and we only get to work for an hour >a day. > >That's 100% crap. It's not "fair" that the commercial engines have better and >deeper books. It's not "fair" that they search deeper than our amateur engines. >It's not "fair" that some people are born rich. It's not "fair" that some people >are born with only 1 leg. Life isn't fair. Get over it. > >Russell The book is a product of humans. So apparently, the strength of chess engines is not in the program but rather in the book. ;-) As for the commercial products, I don't use them. I did in the past. But to me, what's the difference between an engine that plays at 2200 vs an engine that plays at 2800? None. And if that difference is mainly in the book, then how far has chess programming really come? Steve
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