Author: Don Dailey
Date: 12:10:09 08/25/98
Go up one level in this thread
On August 24, 1998 at 15:56:27, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On August 23, 1998 at 19:45:20, Don Dailey wrote: > >>On August 21, 1998 at 23:55:07, blass uri wrote: >> >>>I think it can be a good idea to do a tournament of programs when >>>every game between 2 computer programs will be replayed 3 times: >>>1 time when both program have an opening book. >>>1 time when only white has an opening book. >>>and 1 time when only black has an opening book. >>> >>>By this tournament we can estimate the value of the books opening in elo. >>> >>>Uri >> >> >>A reasonable idea. I have another idea for those situations where you >>want to play long matches between just 2 machines to minimize the >>effect of killer books. It's certainly not a new idea but a reasonable >>one I think. You simply determine in advance how deep you can go in >>the openings and then not allow duplicate games beyond this point. For >>instance if you decide 8 moves provide adequate variety, then the >>first time another game duplicates within the first 8 moves, (even if >>the result is different) then you throw out the 2nd game and start over >>until you get another unique opening. An opponent can still optimize >>but this becomes much more difficult to do and the opponent program will >>have to take more chances to do it right like having to put weaker moves >>in his book to bait a specific opponent. >> >>Another similar idea is to decide in advance how many games should be >>in the match (n) and play 2n games. Use the above idea but determine >>what number of moves is just big enough to not exclude too many games. >>This has the merit of not having to figure this out in advance but >>requires much more testing overhead. >> >>- Don > > >I have another alternative: How about we just continue to work on >book-learning, which is still fairly infantile in the way things work, and >let the programs fend for themselves? IE (and speaking only for myelsf here) >my goal is to have a program that can stand by itself, against any sort of >pranks you might throw at it... trying to repeat games... trying to use pre- >calculated killer book lines... trying to coax it into dubious positions by >offering a gambit pawn... You get no argument from me. I consider this stuff as a side issue and agree with you that it is each programs responsibility to play the whole game of chess including the openings. - Don >It is too easy to find ways for a human to finagle a program so that it doesn't >get burned. I find it *much* more interesting to finagle the program so that it >finagles itself and self-avoids these silly messes. > >There are problems, because book-learning is not real good (at least my >version) since a book can have millions of games in it, and you really ought >to play each game once to confirm that it is playable or not... and that is >*really* impossible... Someone suggested that the "crafty world" might do this >by setting up each crafty clone to play only one specific opening and become a >"expert" in it (since learned data is sharable with the import facility in >Crafty). And this might be a solution... one only plays the French as black >in response to 1. e4, and it would not take forever to play the various book >lines and learn what is good and what is bad. > >But I like the "automatic" approach, rather than trying tournaments with no >books, limited books, identical books, etc. Something tells me that Genius >would "die" without the book it normally uses, because it has some lines that >it handles very well, while other programs would probably not be happy. It >doesn't make a lot of sense to spend time trying to test "parts" of a program, >because it is really a complete entity, that includes the engine, the book, the >endgame databases, learning information, and whatever else is part of the >"thing". > >Also it seems more satisfying to solve something once, than to have to >continually solve it over and over manually...
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