Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 09:01:45 01/11/04
Recently I have been going through a few good printed books on Chess Strategy. Currently, I am trying to FULLY assimilate the lessons in "Chess Strategy" by Gufeld and Kalienchenko. These two authors [primarily Gufeld] conveniently split position assessment into what they call "intuitive" assessment and assessment via "concrete calculation." This is done for convenience of presentation, but the assessment of many positions requires a mix of both. The first goal of position assessment is to determine who is better and by how much. This can be expressed with codes [+-, +/-, +/=, =, =/+, -/+, -+, and # or stalemate, etc.] or numerically. Knowing which side is better is essential to select the correct strategy for the position. The next goal of position assessment is to identify the plans in the position, or at least indicated strategies, based on both tactical and positional features. One thing I have noticed is that these authors typically assess most positions based primarily on positional considerations, supported by looking at lines to exploit positional features. [Of course, some positions are so tactical that concrete analysis is the only useful procedure.] This allows them to see positional sacrifices in their proper context, i.e. pursuit of strategic goals. It would seem to me that the chess programmer's primary goal in design of position evaluation code would be to accomplish a "correct assessment of the position" in the same sense that these two authors do. If true, then the "position evaluation" code would be primarily positional, [supplemented with tactical] it seems to me. If the position cannot be properly evaluated by "intuitive assessment," then some specialized "searching" would have to be accomplished before the position assessment could be completed properly. If I understand the bulletins posted here at CCC, chess programmers typically use "position evaluation" primarily or solely for the immediate determination of which move continuations to search. If true, then how can this determination be done properly prior to completion of the evaluation of the position? It seems that some revisiting of incompletely-evaluated positions would be necessary. Also, it seems to me that some of the "searching" should be done for the purpose of completing the evaluation of a specific "internal node" position [other than the position on the board in the game]. This implies that the general nature, or character, of such searching might be different from the "ordinary" searching. Anyway, my thinking is that there is room for new ideas in this area although I do not know [and cannot know] what the commercial engines do internally. Maybe they already do all this? Bob D.
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