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Subject: Re: SOMCS [kind of OT]

Author: Vasik Rajlich

Date: 15:05:13 03/15/04

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On March 15, 2004 at 17:23:41, martin fierz wrote:

>On March 15, 2004 at 15:28:55, Tord Romstad wrote:
>
>>On March 15, 2004 at 14:30:58, Vasik Rajlich wrote:
>>
>>>Yeah, actually the book was very good - but not for the reason Watson was hoping
>>>for. You roll your eyes once per page when the "it's all about calculation"
>>>comment inevitably comes up - and look at the games, conveniently organized by
>>>the basic patterns ... :-)
>>
>>Is it a book you would recommend even for us lowly patzers, or is it the kind
>>of book you won't understand a word of unless you are a really strong player?
>>
>>Tord
>
>i don't know how lowly a patzer you are, but it is certainly a thought-provoking
>book. on the other hand, as an engine author you are probably looking for rules
>to implement in your eval function, and you won't find any in this book - that
>is watson's dogma - there are no rules...
>
>cheers
>  martin

I partly agree. You won't get much that would help Gothmog, because what's
useful for a human isn't useful for a computer.

Consider the following "pattern":

[d]r2q1rk/ppnn1pbp/3p2p/2pP/P3PP/2N2Q1P/BP4P/R1B2RK w - -

Once you've seen this type of position as a human, you know the right plan: 16.
e5 dxe5 17. f5 and black is suffering. A human learns this position by seeing a
few instances of it, and his level gets higher as a result.

However, this "knowledge" will be completely useless to a chess programmer. If
you start trying to match this pattern inside your evaluation function, you'll
just create a bloated mess, and it won't even do what you want. Instead, you
program a few basic king safety terms, let your engine search a few ply, and
voila!

Vas



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