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Subject: Re: positional/tactical rating

Author: Vasik Rajlich

Date: 03:10:29 05/21/04

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On May 20, 2004 at 17:29:11, Russell Reagan wrote:

>On May 20, 2004 at 13:12:50, Andrei P wrote:
>
>>how to get positional and tactical rating (preferably in elo points) for a given
>>engine? is there a table with this kind of data for a large number of engines?
>
>How can you seperate a "positional rating" from a "tactical rating". "Tacitcs"
>and "positional advantages" are human concepts. We use tactical and positional
>patterns to help us decide which moves and positions are better because we can't
>possibly calculate out all of the variations like the computer does.
>

Computers also can't calculate all of the variations.

How about this:

"tactical rating" == performance on tactical testsuite (this means clear
tactical problems - not ones that can be "solved" by king safety evaluation or
passed pawn evaluation)

"positional rating" == actual rating - tactical rating

Of course it's true that the positional level of an engine does not come only
from the evaluation function. A deeper search will appear to understand more,
while wrong pruning can give the appearance that the engine understands less.

Vas

>Also, an ELO rating is only a relative indication of who is better. Only ELO
>differences matter. If I came up with a test that gave you a tactical and
>positional rating in ELO points, it wouldn't mean anything to people or engines
>that didn't take the test. I could have a 5000 ELO rating in some rating pool,
>but if Kasparov entered that rating pool, he would have around a 6800 ELO
>rating.



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