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Subject: Re: Thinker 4.6b third after 1st round!

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 11:59:34 06/02/04

Go up one level in this thread


On June 02, 2004 at 14:08:44, Dan Honeycutt wrote:

>On June 02, 2004 at 12:23:29, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On June 02, 2004 at 06:48:03, Vasik Rajlich wrote:
>>
>[snip]
>
>>>frosting on the cake.
>>>
>>>For an amateur engine though, it's just a distraction. We have enough of those
>>>as it is. The various zero-cost solutions are totally sufficient.
>>
>>
>>What is a "zero cost solution" to the book problem?  I've been working on a
>>chess program since 1968.  I have _never_ found a "zero cost solution" to the
>>book problem.  My current effort is the closest there can be, because once I
>>wrote the code (which did not take months of effort by the way) it began to
>>manage its own book, freeing me from that responsibility.  Net gain in
>>productivity was very large.  If you don't learn, you either hand-tune or get
>>killed.  The former is a huge time drain, the latter is unpleasant. :)
>>
>>I have published a paper in the JICCA explaining _exactly_ how I did learning.
>>So you don't have to start from scratch, which I did.  And even from scratch it
>>was hardly a huge effort.  The complete learning code in crafty, book and
>>position, importing, exporting, everything is 1200 lines of C with plenty of
>>comments.  It isn't _that_ hard to do...
>>
>>I'm sure that if I could do it, anyone could do it...
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>Just my 2 cents of course ...
>>>
>>>Vas
>
>I think Vas was talking to me, not you.  A (near) zero-cost solution is to get a
>collection of high quality games, grind those into a book and let the engine
>play move so-and-so the same percent of the time as played in the games
>collection.  Your engine prefers 1 d4 over 1 e4.  Mine has too little experience
>to know what it prefers.
>
>Dan H.


trust me, that will _not_ work.  All of us using automatically-generated books
have tried that, and found it _severely_ wanting.  What happens when move X is
played in thousands of games, until someone busts the line with new analysis.
You lose that game every time you play it.  That's a killer.

Learning solves it cleanly.  The better your initial book, the better your
program will perform, but learning _still_ cleans up all the things that the
book screws up for one reason or another.




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