Author: Uri Blass
Date: 21:34:02 07/12/04
Go up one level in this thread
On July 12, 2004 at 19:58:20, Amir Ban wrote: > >Let me first thank those who sent their support during the tournament or posted >their greetings after it. It is well appreciated. > >Time to say some random things about Junior, the event, and computer chess. > >Having the Championship at home was different, in some expected and some >unexpected ways. I'm pretty used to these events by now, and I found that when >away from home, isolated from family, work and current tasks, they are an >about-right balance between the hectic and the relaxed. This time, with the >tournament hall a half-hour drive from home, it was almost more than I could >handle. I need a rest. > >The organization was a pleasant surprise. Playing conditions were superb. There >were far more plugs and connections than necessary. Technical support was very >competent. Commentary by Boris Alterman was first class. > >Nevertheless, there were some disappointments: PR work was not evident. The >media were simply not there. Some media coverage would have attracted the >crowds. As it was, the nearby auditorium they reserved for spill-over crowds (my >daughter counted the seats: 320!) remained unoccupied. > >The traditional closing banquet was waived this time, in favour of speeches and >glasses of wine. A pity. The opening promise by David Levy for social events did >not materialize. > >The starting point for Junior in this tournament was Graz, from which I returned > with a sense of failure, realizing that I have failed to progress beyond J8 >levels. Still, that was almost good enough to win, so there was hope. > >I had quite a few major things mapped out to be tried. Most of them were >abandoned after a week or two of work showed they were not productive. Did you try only changing the evaluation or also changes in the search? > >In the midst of this open brain surgery we decided to pull out something to play >in CCT6. It proved to be quite entertaining, but hardly ready for big time. > >Meanwhile Shay adopted a testing strategy that proved particularly unflattering >to the new Junior, indicating it had slipped by a 100 or so rating points. I was >skeptical about that, but decided to continue on the current path, trusting good >results to follow. That proved exceptionally difficult. As a matter of fact, >until weeks before the championship it was not clear that we were not heading >for a rude embarrassment. What changed this was that at some point Boris started >telling us that he liked what he saw. I am not sure if I understand correctly. Do you say in other words that Boris helped you by suggesting to test the correct version(the version that he liked)? > >Going into the first round, against Jonny, it seemed we have after all achieved >nothing. Deep Junior was in imminent danger of losing for several moves, grossly >misevaluating and apparently blind to tactics. However, it did manage to pull >together the position and successfully negotiated a draw. > >After that game I threw away a feature I always knew was dubious to get the >DeepJuniorEY version, which played the bulk of the tournament, and performed >very well. If you always knew it was dubious why did not you do it before the first round? Is it something that you planned to do and forgot about it? In the last day we threw in the EM version, which was apparently >superior, based on inadequate testing. That was a gamble, but the idea was to >try it out in the last two rounds before the expected playoff. EM did not fail, >but there was no playoff for it to play ... Is the difference between EY and EM is evaluation or search or both? Did the draw against Isichess influenced you to make some changes? > >Book work is tremendously important in these tournaments. Do you think that you won the tournament thanks to better book preperation that helped Junior to get positions that it evaluates correctly inspite of slightly inferior engine(relative to shredder8 because you cannot compare the engine with Shredder of the tournament that you do not have). It is not a secret that Junior8 is weaker than Shredder8 and if you did not do a significant improvement(I hope you did) then I do not expect Junior of today even to be at the same level as Shredder8 if you use some book that is not optimized for one of the engines like Fritz8.ctg or you use something like the nunn match. Do you test with different book to try to evaluate progress of the engine or alternatively use the nunn match(possibly with different random starting positions from games) or do you plan to do it now after the tournament? It sometimes seems as >if Boris is in charge, while I and Shay are delegated to the role of >technicians. The symbiosis between Boris and Junior has grown and matured since >the early days, when they hardly understood each other. That was the state of >things at Paderborn '99, when Boris brilliantly planned a Sicilian line into >which Fritz blindly followed. He "forgot" to tell Junior about it, who failed to >understand what was expected of him, started playing elsewhere, and lost. > >The games between Junior, Fritz and Shredder were all sharp tactical draws. In >Shredder-Fritz there were even some vaguely ridiculous fireworks just to force >the obvious draw. Falcon-Shredder was similar, and probably the most spectacular >game of the tournament, with some even more spectacular unplayed variations. The >top programs now make you feel that going out of the opening they can see >virtually till the end. Frightening thought. > >Junior and Shredder were obviously in top form for this championship. Shredder >always gives the impression of near perfection, so it's very hard for me to >judge whether it has made progress. I understood from Stefan that he did not have time to work much on the engine recently so I guess that he probably has something that is only slightly better than Shredder8. Fritz, on the other hand, has clearly not >gone in the right direction. After Graz, where it played in superb consistent >style, it seemed to have lost its footing to the wobbly performance that ruined >some of its previous tournaments. > >Among the newcomers, the performance is mixed. Quite clearly, Jonny is the one >who made the most progress. The promise of Sjeng, on the other hand, will have >to wait for next year. Falcon has made progress, but lacks the consistency and >solidity to convert it to results. > >Among the rest, Diep deserves mention. It had a good result, and there is >obvious talent invested there, but the inconsistency that always characterized >it was apparent in this tournament too. There is a FAQ in computer chess of >whether it helps if the programmer is a good chess player. My answer (strictly >IMO) is probably unexpected: It hurts. When you are a good player, you tend to >think about the problem in all the wrong ways. Anyway one thing that is clear to >me is that you have to be a very good programmer. No shortcuts there. > >Amir I agree that it is important to be a very good programmer(this is my disadvantage and the code of today is badly written) but I do not think that being a good player is a disadvantage. I think that it is important to test and the problem of some participants is lack of testing. I talked with Gerd(programmer of Icichess) Gerd is not a strong chess player. His program is even slower searcher than movei in nodes per second and the programmer told me that most of the time is used on the evaluation. I asked him if he checked to test if what he added in the evaluation was productive and the surprising reply was negative. I try to test terms that I add to the evaluation and unfortunately even things that are cheap to add did not prove themselves to be productive. I have a code to evaluate backward pawns or knightoutposts and it is relatively cheap to add it(no big difference in nodes per seconds) but none of them was proved to be productive based on my tests games of the program against previous version so I did not add them. I do not know if the reason is bugs in the evaluation or a different reason like wrong definition of backward pawn or knight outposts(I try to test before playing games by giving the new version some positions to analyze to see if the evaluation is changed to the expected side) Uri
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