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Subject: Re: Static Eval Test

Author: Gerd Isenberg

Date: 14:43:24 09/08/02

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On September 08, 2002 at 15:41:50, martin fierz wrote:

>On September 07, 2002 at 19:46:49, Peter McKenzie wrote:
>
>>I've been having a break from computer chess post WCCC, but have now started
>>going over some of Warp's games.  First up is Warp's worst game, the loss vs
>>Brutus.  In this game, Warp showed a total lack of understanding of its
>>centralised king in the early middlegame and lost without a fight.
>>
>>I present here the position after move 21 in the game.  White has grabbed a pawn
>>thinking this position is OK, but in reality the white king is hopelessly stuck
>>in the centre.  Also, white is passive, black is active and has a safe king,
>>therefore white is totally winning here:
>>
>>[D]r1r3k1/1p3ppp/b5q1/p7/4n3/P3PNB1/1P3PPP/1Q1RK2R b K - 0 1
>>
>>I am curious what the static evaluation of various programs is here.  The
>>version of warp used in Maastricht gives 0.238 in favour of white.  Ideally the
>>static evaluation should favour black here I think.
>>
>>cheers,
>>Peter
>
>the only important thing to recognize is that
>Ba6 prevents castling && lots of material (queens!) on board.

most important?

>
>i think you can easily give this kind of feature a value of 1 pawn.
>however, you have to be kind of certain that it is here to stay. which
>means that you should make sure that there is no move like c2-c4 before
>applying this kind of rule. gerd gave a nice description of what his eval
>is doing here, but i think part of it is no good: his count of "There are four
>black pieces controlling squares with distance two from king." is probably no
>useful measure. e.g. place the black bishop on b6 instead of a6, and you still
>have that feature, but now it is black who has to hope for a draw.

The order of the statements was rather random and doesn't imply any importance
or weights. The most important is the (long time) lack of doing a castle or a
indirect castle via Kf2,Re1,Kg1. That in conjunction with the rather missing
ability to move a pawn or light piece to the diagonal.

"There are four black pieces controlling squares with distance two from king" is
a light weight, but is simply a heuristic that may improve the probability of
"correctness".


>
>i know what you are worried about when not giving the "Ba6-prevents-castling &
>queens on board" feature a higher eval. it might go away again, if white could
>play something like Be2 or Ne2 and then castle. i have often thought about
>similar things in my checkers program. in the end, i usually put high eval terms
>for this kind of feature in anyway, because i think that if white can free
>himself from this type of bind, the search will find it. however, if he cannot,
>then it is very important that the eval tells you that he is in trouble. of
>course i can search much deeper in checkers, which helps me believe that the
>search will find it...
>

yes, but sometimes it's a decisive leaf-position :-)

cheers,
Gerd

>aloha
>  martin



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