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Subject: clarification

Author: Jay Scott

Date: 14:36:47 02/20/04

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I wrote:

>Full-width searches slow down exponentially with depth. I interpret the time
>control finding as meaning that the human "algorithm" may have asymptotic
>behavior better than exponential.

I want to amend that. It's misleading. Taken literally, the asymptotic cost of
any reasonable chess algorithm is constant, because in the limit you solve the
game. :-)

But it still makes sense to try to plot "chess strength" (on some absolute
scale) versus time per move. In practice, interesting positions cannot be
solved, and we can pretend that any curve we get goes on to infinity. It's clear
to me that the shape of this curve is different for humans and existing
programs. If judged in the computer science way, "How well can you do in the
limit?", then the judgment is: Given a long enough time control (if the relation
observed so far continues to hold), then humans play better.

That is a powerful motivation for chess programmers to study human chess play.

  Jay



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