Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Making a Program More Aggressive

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 11:55:55 08/15/04

Go up one level in this thread


On August 15, 2004 at 14:13:35, Stuart Cracraft wrote:

>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

<y point is that Gerbil is not the best program but as far as I remember it did
in 1 second per move better result than the result that your program did in 30
seconds per move so I guess that there is a lot to improve in your program only
in the search.

Uri



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.