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

Author: Dan Honeycutt

Date: 13:24:19 06/02/04

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On June 02, 2004 at 14:59:34, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>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.

For Crafty, playing in basement tournaments and around the internet, hundreds of
games a day - yes.  For me, playing maybe a dozen tournament games a day, it's
an extra loss or two a week.

>
>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.

I don't disagree.  My book is popularity based but it's structured so I can
alter weights - by learning, hand tuning or whatever.  It's just that I have
other things I feel need work worse.  One day I'll get around to worrying about
my bad book lines.

Dan H.




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