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Subject: Re: Thanks, Gentlemen!

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 08:54:15 02/28/03

Go up one level in this thread


On February 28, 2003 at 11:05:21, Amir Ban wrote:

>On February 28, 2003 at 03:11:41, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On February 27, 2003 at 20:23:39, Amir Ban wrote:
>>
>>>On February 26, 2003 at 18:48:53, Stephen Ham wrote:
>>>
>>>>Thanks,
>>>>
>>>>Dann, Uri, and Robin! I think I understood all of that. That was very helpful.
>>>>Again, I'm know next to nothing about chess engine programing, so I assumed that
>>>>the evaluation function guided the search function. I don't know why I assumend
>>>>that...I just did.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Of course the evaluation guides the search. Since you got here various answers
>>>that basically say evaluation is not that important I will add a view that
>>>strongly disagrees. Getting evaluation right is the most important thing for a
>>>program to do in a position. Under-evaluation will often lead to playing weak
>>>moves, but over-evaluation is almost always fatal against an opponent who has
>>>the right assessment.
>>>
>>>Amir
>>
>>I have some comments here
>>
>>1)Evaluation is not only to be more correct in score but to choose better moves.
>
>That's almost the same. I'm not arguing with that if there's only one good move
>in a position a program will choose it regardless of its evaluation, but given
>half a chance a program with incorrect evaluation will get it wrong.
>
>
>>If you add to your evaluation a random small noise the result may be worse
>>than if you add a constant.
>>
>
>There are transformations to the scores that do not change the meaning of the
>evaluation. Any linear mapping is one of them. Actually any mapping that
>preserves order doesn't matter in principle.
>
>This doesn't mean that evaluation is not important.
>
>
>>2)I think that evaluation is one of the main things but it is not clear that
>>it is more important than search.
>>
>>If you make the program 3 times faster thanks to better search rules(I mean
>>something eqvivalence because I do not expect better search rules to give the
>>same improvement in every position) then it is a big improvement(I believe that
>>the potential is practically bigger).
>>
>
>Bigger than what ?

Bigger than being 3 times faster.

I believe that it is possible to get more than you can get from being
3 times faster by only better search rules without changing the evaluation.


>
>
>>3)If I understood correctly most of your work from Junior5 is about evaluation.
>>
>>It may be interesting to know if Junior8 can beat Junior5 with time odds of 3:1
>>(it is possible to say +200% for one engine in engine matches)
>>
>>I believe that it will be the case only if the time control is long enough
>>but again I think that better search rules with the same evaluation may give
>>exponential improvement when the time control is slower.
>>
>>4)The problem is that practically you cannot seperate between the 2 and
>>say that the evaluation gave you x elo and the search gave you y elo because
>>it is possible that a change in the search rules is productive only thanks to
>>better evaluation.
>>
>
>Tell me about it :) The fact that things are complicated and interconnected
>doesn't mean that we should not discuss them.
>
>Amir

Parameters for search rules may be dependent on evaluation.
null move pruning is one example.

The question if to use R=2 or R=3 may be dependent on the evaluation.

My point is that it is possible that you could do a positive change
on the search rules thanks to changes in your evaluation .

Uri



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