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Subject: Re: Rebel XP Machëide x2cou_51 and 56 strike back... games versus Fritz7

Author: martin fierz

Date: 16:59:39 09/09/02

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On September 09, 2002 at 18:42:28, Thorsten Czub wrote:

>Only DOS :-)))
>No tablebases for rebel. only 60 MB hash.
>windows version hopefully released... when ed is ready :-)))

x2cou_51, x2cou_56? how many versions have you tested, thorsten?

i ask because i wonder if you are wasting your time with the following approach:
if you produce 50 versions of rebel (let's imagine they are all same strong) and
then play a short (e.g. 10 games) match against fritz with each of the 50
versions - what happens? thanks to statistical fluctuations *alone*, some
versions of rebel will win, some will lose. you will think you produce a great
new playing style, when all you do is chase random numbers... how many games do
you play with every style? i don't want to stop you from trying to improve rebel
- just to make sure you do it right :-)
let me give you an example: when i change something at my checkers engine, i
play matches of 288 games against a control program for comparison. i have often
seen the first 20 games be like +4 for one engine, but finally it loses the
match...

aloha
  martin

PS: this "try lots of ideas and one will be good" strategy is something you can
actually make money with on the stock market: an arbitrary example: use an
M-N-strategy to make money at the stock market: at the end of every year, buy
stock of companies which are between rank M and N in performance over the last
year, eg M=4, N=10. the idea is to not buy companies with the best performance
because they probably won't be able to repeat their performance, according to
some stock market gurus. now, take 50 such strategies with different M and N
numbers and look backward which would have performed best over the last 10
years. you are virtually *guaranteed* to find one which outperforms the market.
now, the important money-making step: DO NOT USE THIS STRATEGY YOURSELF. it
won't work, because it's just a random fluctuation thing. one of these
strategies had to be best. instead, sell books on how to make money at the stock
market, quoting this strategy and saying "over the last 10 years, you would have
outperformed the market by 5%". this seems to work well :-)



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