Author: Omid David Tabibi
Date: 09:52:04 06/11/03
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On June 11, 2003 at 11:02:58, Tony Werten wrote: >On June 10, 2003 at 19:19:41, Omid David Tabibi wrote: > >>On June 09, 2003 at 04:01:12, Walter Faxon wrote: >> >>>Musings on nonstandard computer chess techniques. >>> >>>What's new on the computer chess front? I note that Sergei S. Markoff's new >>>program SmarThink (http://www.aigroup.narod.ru/detailse.htm) is supposed to use >>>(among many other things) some of former world chess champion M.M. Botvinnik's >>>ideas. Botvinnik's "Computers, Chess and Long-Range Planning" (Springer, 1970) >>>and "Chess: Solving Inexact Search Problems" (Springer, 1983) described a method >>>that apparently only Botvinnik's programmer/protege Boris Stilman believed would >>>work, which Stilman later generalized in his own book "Linguistic Geometry: From >>>Search to Construction" (Kluwer, 2000). Markoff's own on-line writings on chess >>>algorithms (http://www.aigroup.narod.ru/indexe.htm) are only in Russian, so far. >>> (I am assuming that the SmarThink download doesn't include source.) >>> >>>Markoff also writes that his first program included ideas from the authors of >>>"Kaissa". Those authors published papers in the 1970's on "the method of >>>analogies" to reduce search work, but they did not use it in their competitive >>>program. If you recall, Hsu wrote in "Behind Deep Blue" (Princeton Univ. Pr., >>>2002) that he had implemented a stripped-down version of the analogies method >>>for Deep Blue. It is the unpublished intellectual property of IBM. >>> >>>Sometimes I wonder if chess program authors mention intriguing nonsense just to >>>throw their competitors off the track. I recall someone once letting slip that >>>he had used Botvinnik's method for an early hardware-limited microcomputer >>>program. That seems unlikely. Nearly 15 years ago an author (Kittinger?) >>>dropped hints that he had adopted McAllester's 1988 method "conspiracy number >>>search" (aka conspiracy search) for his program, using the term "nodulation". >>>Published results indicate that plain conspiracy numbers don't work very well >>>for chess. As far as I know, today only experiments on multiprocessor machines >>>are being conducted; no competitive microcomputer program uses it at all. So >>>was it a mirage -- or a trick? >>> >>>David McAllester and Deniz Yuret did finally publish their revised work >>>(Alpha-Beta-Conspiracy Search. ICGA Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 (March 2002), pp. >>>16--35), nearly ten years after their initial experiments with the >>>multiprocessor program Star-Socrates. And ten years from now?... >>> >>>And what about Berliner's B* algorithm? (Actually Palay's probabilistic B* >>>using a probability distribution for evaluation instead of a simple range, today >>>suggestive that techniques from fuzzy logic might be applied.) The chess >>>machine Hitech was originally built for it in the early 1980's (equal first on >>>points but second on tiebreak, WCCC 1986) -- and finally began using it. As of >>>mid-1993 it was "almost as good as regular Hitech". In mid-1995 it was still >>>"not quite as good as brute force searching." In the abstract of his last word >>>on the subject (Hans J. Berliner and Chris McConnell. B* probability based >>>search. Artificial Intelligence, Volume 86, Issue 1, September 1996, Pages >>>97-156) Berliner writes, "Analysis of the data indicates that should additional >>>power become available, the B* technique will scale up considerably better than >>>brute-force techniques." Berliner is now retired. More power is available. >>>Where are the later papers? Where is B* today? >>> >>>My suggestion: you are writing a chess program. Go ahead, put in negascout, >>>null-move pruning, IID, everything everybody is already doing. Then, look to >>>the literature and find some method that everybody is _not_ doing. Implement >>>it, experiment with it, and _publish_ your results. Please. >> >>A nice post. >> >>Junghanns gives a good overview of all the alternatives to alpha-beta at: >> >>Are There Practical Alternatives to Alpha-beta?" >>ICCA Journal, Vol. 21, No. 5, 1998. pp. 14--32. >>http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/junghanns98are.html >> >>Just take a look at all the chess related research published in ICGA in the last >>year: >> >>ICGA 25(1): >> Alpha-Beta Conspiracy Search >> (McAllester & Yuret) >> [an interesting, but old article] >> >> A Lockless Transposition-Table Implementation for Parallel Search >> (Hyatt & Mann) >> [a smart transposition table idea] >> >>ICGA 25(2): >> Nothing! >> >>ICGA 25(3): >> Verified Null-Move Pruning >> (David Tabibi & Netanyahu) >> >>ICGA 25(4): >> Nothing! > >I don't think this issue actually appeared ??? http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/icga/journal/contents/content25-4.htm > >Tony > >> >>ICGA 26(1): [haven't received the issue yet, just looked at >> http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/icga/journal/contents/content26-1.htm] >> >> Nothing! >> >> >>I believe that all this lack of research stems from the Deep Blue - Kasparov >>match. Deep Blue's victory convinced many that nothing is left to be done in >>chess, so let's move on. The new trend seems to be Go; just take a look at the >>two latest ICGA issues: it's all about Go. Maybe that's the reason why the name >>ICCA was changed to ICGA ;) >> >> >> >>> >>>-- Walter
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