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Subject: Re: The importance of learning

Author: James T. Walker

Date: 05:02:03 01/14/04

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On January 14, 2004 at 07:08:50, Tord Romstad wrote:

>The day before I released Gothmog 0.4.5, I played a blitz match (4 minutes/game,
>with 1 second increment) between my engine and Phalanx XXII on my PowerBook
>G4 550 MHz.  Gothmog narrowly won the match; the final score was 52.5-47.5.
>
>Yesterday, I started a new match between the same two engines.  The only
>difference was that this match was played on a PIV 2.4 GHz, and that learning
>was disabled for Phalanx in the second match (my own engine doesn't learn).
>The result: 65-35 for Gothmog.
>
>Is this just a statistical fluctuation, or is learning really that effective?
>Or perhaps Phalanx (a very old engine) simply doesn't play well on fast
>hardware?
>
>Tord

I think the answer would lie in how many games were repeated. (I assume you are
talking about book learning)
I have done a test on the effectiveness of book learning by playing the same
program vs itself after one had "learned" from 1500 games and the other had no
previous learning.  There was almost not difference in performance.  I belive
the only real benefit of book learning is to prevent repeating the same loss
over and over.
Jim



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