Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 08:32:28 01/02/04
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On January 02, 2004 at 02:13:51, Odd Gunnar Malin wrote: >On January 01, 2004 at 20:55:49, Bob Durrett wrote: > >> >>Suppose someone wanted to produce a chess-playing program which emulated the >>play of a human rated 1200 to 2200. >> > >Hi. > >I'm a bit focused on how to help a 1200 player etc. instead how simulating one. >Eg. the program should setup position/combination of a type hver a certain level >player have problem with. Maybe configurable (or automatic adjusted) for which >types to set up. > >A sample. >For a beginner in the childgroup there are three overwhelming errors. > >1. Don't see own pieces in price. >2. Don't see opponent pieces in price. >3. Leave a piece in price because of the move made (most common). > >Of course you have counting errors and so on, but if you look at one game these >take the cake. > >Here a playingprogram allways have to take a piece left in price no matter how >low it is adjusted. Only by this you can help a player with the error 1 and 3. >It could (should) also leave it's own piece in price occasionaly, here maybe >some types of misses more than others. > >Odd Gunnar I, too, am interested in helping chess beginners get started. As it happens, I am an also an avid reader of printed [hardcopy] chess books and have read a number of them devoted to the teaching of beginners. My most recent acquisition of this type was "Everyone's 2nd Chess Book" by Dan Heisman, copyright 2000, ISBN 0938650556, Thinker's Press, Inc. Dan lists "the eleven most common mistakes of players rated 800-1400" as follows: (1) Missing a simple tactic (2) Not looking at what your opponent is threatening (3) Not getting all pieces into play (4) Not knowing basic opening traps (5) Phantom fears (6) Overly worried about the value of the pieces (7) Overly worried about positional liabilities (8) Playing too fast (9) Not looking for a better move (10) Being afraid of the opponent (11) Worrying about your rating The problem with the above list is that it is not easy to see how to program a chess engine to have these faults. In fact, that is probably impossible. Instead, one might determine how each of the above "most common" mistakes would affect the selection of moves. From that, it might be possible to model [statistically or otherwise] the move outputs of the "players rated 800-1400." In other words, what is desired is to create a "black box" who's chess games could not be distinguished from the chess games of "players rated 800-1400." Perhaps attempting to use Heisman's list would not be the best way to model the play of a chessplayer. Instead, just obtaining and analyzing a collection of games played by people of the same rating might be better. The types of mistakes could be determined, their rate of occurrences noted, and then a statistical model could be produced to represent the player. Two parameters, at least, would be important: (a) rating of the player and (b) time limits on the games. Generally, mistakes are much more prevalent for fast games than for slow games and the nature of the mistakes is also dependent on the speed of the game. I feel that human chessplayers, regardless of rating, can benefit greatly from play against other human chessplayers who are at about the same strength or maybe slightly stronger. The reason is the same as that which I mentioned earlier. It is beneficial to learn how to see and punish the opponent's blunders and other errors. A game cannot be won if the opponent plays perfectly. If one wishes to gain skill in spotting and exploiting errors, then it is necessary to play against an opponent who makes such errors. Beginners have no chance of seeing and exploiting the types of errors made by Kasparov, but they can see and exploit errors of the type made by other beginners. The top GMs need to play against opponents who make "GM errors." A strong chess engine [Fritz, Hiarcs, Shredder, Tiger, Junior, Crafty, Chessmaster 9000, etc.] can help the beginner to see his/her mistakes and oversights during post-mortem analysis. If a beginner does not realize that he/she has made such errors, he/she will keep on playing such errors and be "dumb, fat, and happy" and never get much better at the game. My opinion is that revisiting positions which the player previously failed to solve, and then making a second attempt to solve those positions would be educational. On the other hand, just looking at the solution as presented by a chess engine [or a human] would have little benefit. A human trainer is clearly better than a chess engine, at least today. Maybe tomorrow [in the future] than may not be true but that seems very unlikely. We must wait for HAL! : ) Bob D.
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