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Subject: Re: another assumption

Author: Johan Hutting

Date: 11:04:00 12/11/02

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On December 11, 2002 at 10:46:08, Sune Fischer wrote:

>On December 11, 2002 at 10:00:38, Johan Hutting wrote:
>
>>On December 11, 2002 at 07:44:43, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>
>>>Chess is primarily tactics,
>>
>>Vincent does have a point, to get into a position where you can use those
>>tactics you require positional knowledge. Any 1600+ rated player can tell you
>>that :)
>
>Vincent was arguing a different point. I agree with him that it would be hard to
>write a top level program with only 2000 lines of code, but I don't believe it
>is impossible.

Not impossible, but it would require perfect tuning. Problem is the computers
speeding up every year would make the engines with more knowledge catch up in
search depth fast.
>
>I'm pretty sure there is still room for improvement in the area of search.

hopefully there is :)

>And probably evaluation is secondary to search in 95% of the cases.

I don't agree. 95% is a _lot_. See Gerbil for an example of stable search, few
eval.

>>My guess is Uri uses a very simple patzer eval with big bonusses for good pieces
>>along with a fast search. So far it makes movei play good, but if you wish to
>>improve you'll run into a wall.
>
>I think you can write a lot of important eval in 2000 lines.
>The basic pawn structure and king safety issues can be done in 2000 lines.

Yes, but beating the top programs with that? Good luck :)

>>>if you have near _optimal_ extensions and near
>>>_optimal_ pruning rules, then you could probably get those extra plies on your
>>>opponent and could win WCCC using tactics.
>>
>>but, with a bigger eval and good pruning you will still search the promising
>>lines deeper, right?
>
>Of course, but you also see eval hurting at times, no rules without excepton as
>they say. For instance the trapped bishop codes are often wrong, Bxa2 b3 a5! and
>maybe we have time to free the bishop here or can simply protect it with Ra8 or
>Qb2...

hmmm, that could only happen at high depths. Once the capture comes near to the
root the engine wil see a7-a5-a4 of course.
>
>Not a whole lot of things are easy to staticly evaluate, only simple patterns
>like isolated double pawns can be relatively safely scored, IMO.

True, but that is the main problem of a small evaluation.

>>>My guess is that Fritz would still be mighty strong even if they had to limit
>>>their eval to 2000 lines.
>>
>>It would be outplayed by more positional programs and perhaps score some 'lucky'
>>wins. But that's in 'slow' tempo games, blitz is another matter.
>
>With basic eval I wouldn't fear any program that I outsearched two plies in the
>midgame,

I'll remind you of that when the rewrite of my eval is done :)

> endgame is another matter as the tactics is often few and far between.

yes, especially in rook and pawn endgames, good evaluation is a must.



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