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Subject: Re: The importance of learning

Author: Tom Likens

Date: 09:52:47 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

This reminds me of an episode with Terra recently.  I set
up a 20 game match between Terra and Djinn and sat back to
watch them play.  In the first game Terra swallowed Djinn's
b2 pawn with his queen (i.e. the poisoned pawn Fischer used
to love so much) and lost a tough struggle.  In the next
game they played the same opening moves and Terra deviated
slightly, but still lost the resulting game.

Before the match concluded, they played the opening four more
times, but each time Terra deviated earlier and won all four
games.  I'm not sure how Terra implements its learning, but
it was fascinating to watch and made me believe that learning
can be very effective if done correctly.

regards,
--tom



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