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Subject: Re: Proof for the CSS Claim that WM-Test Elo Numbers meant Strength!

Author: Dan Honeycutt

Date: 12:06:38 06/15/04

Go up one level in this thread


On June 14, 2004 at 17:35:30, Steve Glanzfeld wrote:

>On June 14, 2004 at 17:18:33, Sandro Necchi wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>Look this simple answer and think about:
>>
>>1. a !! move is not 100% a sure win; it only give better winning chances most
>>   of the time.
>>
>>2. a ! move gives only equality or a small edge in most cases.
>>
>>3. 2 ? moves are good enough to lose!
>>
>>4. a ?? moves is most of the time a loosing move.
>>
>>So we can conclude that:
>>
>>1. to be able to find the best moves in many positions not necessarely makes
>>   the program stronger.
>>
>>2. To make several mistakes or weak moves does make the program weaker!
>
>Sorry, I still don't get this. The above is clear to me, but: A good test will
>check if for example how often the ! and !! moves are are found from the test
>set, and how often ? and ?? moves are avoided. Let's imagine we have a program
>which is able to do so very often, while another program can do that much less
>often.
>
>What's wrong now when I say the first program must be stronger than the second?
>

The word "must".  Change that to something like "probably" or "most likely" and
you're right on.  It's easy to tune an engine to perform well in a test suite.
Then you discover it plays like crap.  Test suites are an indication of engine
strength, but the final verdict is games.

Dan H.

>I don't assume you'd say it doesn't matter if a program finds !/!! move or not,
>or if it avoids ?/?? moves or not :) I thought that's all what chess programming
>is about: Finding the good moves, avoiding the bad moves, more often than the
>competitor can.
>
>Steve



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