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Subject: Re: Why use opening books in machine-machine competitions?

Author: Frank Phillips

Date: 08:15:07 11/25/03

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On November 25, 2003 at 09:34:35, Mig Greengard wrote:

>On November 25, 2003 at 07:58:40, Frank Phillips wrote:
>
>>I do not follow the logic.
>>
>>Humans beat each other at chess because of better memory and preparation, plus
>>skill and other attributes of course – stamina, nerves......
>>
>>The significant word seems to be competition.  One skill set versus another.
>>
>>When computers were no threat to professional players, none of this seemed to be
>>an issue.  Is it important now because of the threat of the top humans losing?
>>They certainly appear scared; and if GK is anything to go by would rather go out
>>with a wimper, or is that several $M ......
>
>The logic is human intereference by way of the opening book becoming more
>important than the ability of the engine to play competent chess. And my
>question was about machine-machine. With man-machine it's obvious. A
>Grandmaster-trained book of millions of moves has nothing to do with man vs
>machine at all. It's man's analysts against the machine's analyts. Unplugging
>the engine for 20 moves is silly.
>
>Obviously the problem would be brought up as it escalated to ridiculous levels,
>but questioning the validity of opening books has been around since they have.

I was responding to this part of your message:

"One of the many suggestions for the next man-machine match is to let the human
access a his own database, perhaps a limited number of times. That way it's not
just a battle of human memory versus a specially prepared book with three
million positions entered by humans."

In competition, I do not see a difference between a book for a machine (not
built by the machine  exclusively) and ditto for the human.  I agree with your
statement: it is team versus team, which was partly my point.  The computer
needs a book to preventing it being lost out of the opening.  But that is the
same for humans as far as I can tell.  The only difference is that at some point
a human is on his/her own rather than a machine.

We could change the competition to who has better strategic understanding, who
is better at tactics, who is better at endgames, who is better at this set
position, Fischer random chess, etc but it would be a different competition.

I do not regard the machine as a seperate entity that has to generate its own
opening theory.  Or indeed program itself to do so.

So I was questioning, whether we are really talking about making life easier for
the human.




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