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Subject: Re: 3 FACTORS DETERMINE HOW GOOD A CHESS POSITION EVALUATION IS

Author: Greg Lazarou

Date: 10:03:46 01/09/99

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On January 09, 1999 at 08:59:53, James T. Walker wrote:

>On January 09, 1999 at 05:55:25, Graham Laight wrote:
>
>>As I was sitting eating my breakfast just now, it occured to me that there are
>>basically 3 items that, between them, will influence how close an evaluation of
>>a chess position is to how good that position really is:
>>
>>1. The number of pieces of knowledge the evaluation function can call upon
>>
>>2. The quality of those pieces of knowledge
>>
>>3. The accuracy of selecting the right pieces of knowledge (and their
>>appropriate weightings) for the position at hand
>>
>>
>>Does anybody have any thoughts about this?
>
>Yes, but I'm not an expert so take it with a grain of salt. :-)  The knowledge
>you mention seems correct but would be almost useless without a deep search so
>it seems to me the search depth and knowledge are intertwined and as everything
>else in life, must be a comprimise.  Unless you have deep blue hardware and can
>afford both.
>Jim Walker

Well, a different point of view from a non-expert: the quality of the static
evaluation is orthogonal and independent from the depth search capabilities (not
independent since the higher quality eval probably slows the search - but
independent conceptually). I'd say a sign of a good static eval would be that a
static evaluation at ply of 1 would sort the moves just as well as a search at
depth x (when x is higher and higher the static eval that yields similar results
is better and better).

A perfect eval would mean that you don't need a search function!

Greg



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