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Subject: Re: What is tactics ?

Author: Tom Likens

Date: 11:35:18 02/06/03

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On February 06, 2003 at 13:35:39, Matthias Gemuh wrote:

>
>
>What makes a program tactically strong ?
>
>- right extensions ?
>- search depth ?
>- strange eval and eval weights ?
>- sound pruning ?
>- nps speed ?
>- or simply luck and chance ?
>
>/Matthias.

Hello Matthias,

I found an interesting, and not very obvious (at least to me),
result as I have continued to work on my chess program.
It has become tactically stronger as I've added more purely
positional knowledge.

I believe that the better evaluation function is shaping the
tree (mainly, via the beta cutoff at the beginning of the
quiescence search) so that the program is wasting less time
going down unproductive branches.  Because of this it is
searching deeper and is more tactically aware.

You'll find that as you add code to recognize various patterns
that can occur (such as rook pawn and wrong color bishop
endings) that the program will become better both positionally
and tactically.

regards,
--tom



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