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Subject: Re: Nullmove crap

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 08:11:14 12/19/02

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On December 19, 2002 at 08:55:56, Rolf Tueschen wrote:

>On December 18, 2002 at 22:34:34, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>Here is the point.  I will play you 100 games.  And in _each_ game, at a
>>place of my choice, I get to make two moves in a row.  I believe I can win that
>>match 100-0.
>>
>>If I am in a position where I make two moves in a row and _still_ can't do any
>>damage to your position, my position sucks badly...
>
>But chess is no such game.

Actually it is, and I'll be happy to play a match of games here with you
to show why the "null-move observation" is so powerful for chess...

It isn't the way a human does things, although the idea of "multiple moves in
a row" is not an uncommon analysis approach to see how to get a piece to a
particular place...


>
>Bob, you didn't read the text of that interview. Feist said that FRITZ could not
>have been made so strong without a special selectivity. Now my argument goes
>against such myst. I say that a super GM, a Kramnik, knows of many long-range
>tools, other than just exchanging Q and so on. It also goes against that myst
>because with high select. you must oversee something by force. Something with
>deeper solution of course, because otherwise you (the computer) would have found
>it. So, nullmove, if it is presented as THE solution for superior chess, is crap
>IMO. It's not just the technique, it's more the propaganda myst.

It isn't "THE" solution.  It is an improvement to the original solution,
which was a minimax tree search as proposed by Claude Shannon in the late
1940's.  Then Newell, Simon and Shannon came up with alpha/beta which is must
a better way to do minimax.  Null-move is just a better way to do alpha/beta.

It isn't a "breakthrough new approach"...




>
>Rolf Tueschen



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