Author: Stuart Cracraft
Date: 11:13:35 08/15/04
Go up one level in this thread
On August 15, 2004 at 12:39:56, Uri Blass wrote: >On August 15, 2004 at 12:31:13, Stuart Cracraft wrote: > >>On August 15, 2004 at 11:58:28, Uri Blass wrote: >> >>>On August 15, 2004 at 11:31:11, Stuart Cracraft wrote: >>> >>>>On August 15, 2004 at 10:42:46, Dan Honeycutt wrote: >>>> >>>>>On August 15, 2004 at 10:25:43, Stuart Cracraft wrote: >>>>> >>>>>>So what makes a program more aggressive? >>>>>> >>>>>>Better king safety? >>>>>> >>>>>>Points for control or occupation of square near the enemy king? >>>>>> >>>>>>I've tried obvious things and never been satisfied with the >>>>>>aggression-level. >>>>> >>>>>Asymmetrical king safety. Program needs to not mind moving a piece which >>>>>shelters it's own king to a position that menaces the enemy king. >>>>> >>>>>Dan H. >>>> >>>>My current king safety is very limited but doesn't involve any >>>>hardwiring of friendly pieces to my king. They are free to roam. >>>>At the same time, I've noticed no aggressive tendancy. It plays >>>>passively and reaction-only to what the opponent with few exceptions. >>>>On the other hand, it really fights for the center, develops quickly >>>>and castles on a timely basis. But once the middlegame hits, nothing >>>>much happens except wood-shuffling. >>>> >>>>I do have a tropism factor to get queens, rooks, and knights to >>>>minimize the distance to the enemy king. Perhaps something is wrong >>>>with them. I don't use attack tables in evaluation since my program >>>>has none. I'll have to revamp the whole program some day to add >>>>them incrementally but haven't found a good paradigm yet Even bitboard. >>>>I liked the thing that Atkin/Slate did with incremental updates >>>>in their makemove/unmakemove. >>>> >>>>So basically "middlegame" malaise is my program's problem. I need >>>>to tighten the tropism to just the few squares around the enemy >>>>king and heighten the bonus. There is already a substantial bonus >>>>for loosening pawns protecting the king but I need to get some >>>>heavy firepower over there, sans attack tables, using tropism >>>>to get something real happening. >>>> >>>>I wish there were some test suites that gauged early midle-game >>>>aggression. Not checkmate/mate type things but simply threats against >>>>the castled king. >>>> >>>>Stuart >>> >>>I think that based on your WAC results search and not evaluation is the main >>>problem of your program. >>> >>>You should get easily more than 290/300 in a few seconds if your search work >>>correctly. >>> >>>Uri >> >>Uri, >> >>I wish. It's a Pentium 3 1ghz. Not very fast by today's standards. >>Also, I can only run with 500,000 hash table entries. >> >>If my search is broken, it will be years before I find the bugs >>through trial-and-error. >> >>Also, my results just went up after improving the evaluation only. >> >>Stuart > >better evaluation can also help but if you compare your results with the results >of programs like gerbil that has almost no evaluation you can find that even >Gerbil is clearly better than your program on the same hardware with the same >size of hash tables. > >Uri I tend to design my programs without too much direct reference to other source code en masse. There are exceptions such as the SEE code recently donated to me and an individual idea or two from the board or from looking at a program. However, I try not to review other's entire programs with a view to duplicating their effort. It is unrewarding. I realize I am not the most creative of person's but that is taking it just a bit too far. That said, when I have looked at other program's in the past, I find them practically unreadable so it wouldn't do that much good anyhow. I have an aversion to other programmer's code in large measure. I know nothing about Gerbil except through heresay and certainly nothing about its results on WAC at 1 second per move on a 1ghz P3. So nothing remains proven. Stuart
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