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Subject: Re: Question for Hyatt about Alpha/Beta

Author: Vasik Rajlich

Date: 07:41:21 02/06/04

Go up one level in this thread


On February 06, 2004 at 10:27:48, José Carlos wrote:

>On February 06, 2004 at 09:07:17, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>
>>On February 06, 2004 at 06:26:20, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>On February 06, 2004 at 05:54:29, Vasik Rajlich wrote:
>>>
>>>>On February 06, 2004 at 03:42:42, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On February 06, 2004 at 02:15:35, Tord Romstad wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On February 05, 2004 at 15:15:47, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I think that you underestimate your engine.
>>>>>>>It seems to get similiar depth to crafty.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>For example in the following position it got depth 11 even in blitz 4+2
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Yes, 11 plies in blitz games is not unusual.  But 11 plies in Gothmog and 11
>>>>>>plies in Crafty is not the same.  I do much more forward pruning and depth
>>>>>>reductions than Bob, and fewer extensions.  In non-tactical positions like
>>>>>>the one you give, my qsearch is also considerably smaller than Bob's (I think).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Tord
>>>>>
>>>>>I do not think that there is a big difference.
>>>>>Crafty searches bigger tree because it searches more irrelevant lines.
>>>>>
>>>>>I guess that the main advantage of Crafty relative to Gothmog when you use one
>>>>>processor is superior evaluation(Gothmog's evaluation is more complex but bigger
>>>>>is not always better and not having  bugs or some too optimistic scores of
>>>>>gothmog that lead to wrong sacrifices can be more important and it is possible
>>>>>that Gothmog can get crafty level if you only reduce the big positional scores
>>>>>that encourage it to sacrifice).
>>>>>
>>>>>I do not think that gothmog see less than crafty in the relevant lines(crafty
>>>>>has bigger tree but it proves nothing).
>>>>>I know that test suites are no proof but results of the gcp test suite give me
>>>>>the impression that cases when Gothmog can see more than crafty are not rare.
>>>>>
>>>>>Uri
>>>>
>>>>I have the theory that the greater your search resources (ie combination of time
>>>>and hardware), the less important is the search, and the more important is the
>>>>evaluation.
>>>
>>>I do not agree with that theory.
>>>
>>>For example suppose a program has no tablebases.
>>>
>>>With deep search it may not need knowledge how to win KQ vs K when with small
>>>search it may need the knowledge.
>>>
>>>If the hardware is fast enough the program can solve the game with only piece
>>>square table evaluation.
>>>
>>>Of course we are not going to see it but with good hardware evaluation what win
>>>is better in some endgames become unimportant because the program will not fail
>>>to win thanks to search.
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>Vas's point is this (and its the same reason Zappa is a relatively weak engine
>>tactically):
>>
>>If you are playing at 40 / 2 on a quad opteron, do you care how many WAC
>>positions you can solve in 1 second?
>>
>>anthony
>
>  Why not? Move WAC positions down inside the search tree instead of thinking of
>them only as root positions. Solving them quickly at the root means seing the in
>advance in longer time controls.
>
>  José C.

The stakes are much higher at the root. Overlook a possible tactic at the root,
or play a move (at the root) which walks into a tactic, and you just cost
yourself somewhere around half a point. No improvement in positional play will
make up for that. Overlook a tactic four moves in which makes it possible to
play some good positional move and you cost yourself maybe 1/200th of a point.

It's a question if you accept that some extensions/reductions are good for
tactics and bad for positional play.

Vas



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