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Subject: Re: Penalty for Display of Alternate Moves = ?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:39:37 12/04/02

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On December 04, 2002 at 18:48:00, Pat King wrote:

>On December 03, 2002 at 23:02:48, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On December 03, 2002 at 19:16:39, Pat King wrote:
>[snip]
>>All you know is this:
>>
>>score(best) = X
>>
>>Score of any other root move = X - rnd(constant).  Why rnd()?  Because
>>all we do is prove that each move is worst than the best, and the "stopping
>>point" for each of those searches is simply the _first_ value that is <=
>>X.Displaying those scores would be so terribly misleading that it would
>>be a gross idea to purport that they are anything but random offsets downward
>>from the best move score.
>
>I was about to argue with your rnd assertion, but luckily this evening I was
>thinking faster than I was typing, and I have to agree with you. (Gee that
>hardly hurt at all).
>
>>
>>>
>>>>Fail-low scores don't contain any information that can be compared between them,
>>>
>>>So your position would be that sorting them, and presenting (say) the "top
>>>five", would be invalid.
>>
>>"misleading" is the word that comes to mind, because what do you get if you
>>sort random numbers???
>>
>A random sequence. What if (why don't I drop this?) one were to present them in
>the order they were searched? This would preserve killer move, history, etc.,
>and the variations would presumably demonstrate "why not this move?" to the
>user.


I think the problem would be nit-pickers.  You ask "why not this move" and it
shows you "that loses a pawn by ...".  But further investigation shows that
it _really_ gets you mated.  :)




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