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Subject: Re: Secrets of Rybka and Fruit from my point of view

Author: Zappa

Date: 16:53:44 12/20/05

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On December 20, 2005 at 17:08:05, Stuart Cracraft wrote:

>On December 20, 2005 at 00:19:22, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>
>>On December 16, 2005 at 03:32:16, Vasik Rajlich wrote:
>>
>>>On December 16, 2005 at 00:56:04, Zappa wrote:
>>>
>>>>On December 15, 2005 at 17:05:00, Sergei S. Markoff wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>1) Fruit.
>>>>>
>>>>>Fruit search seems to be primitive. "History pruning" is a variation of
>>>>>well-known idea. After implementing such method in SmarThink some years ago I
>>>>>named it "history-based pruning" and then changed to "ordering-based pruning".
>>>>>The outcome of such methods very depends of whole search model, but anyway
>>>>>history pruning is not the key to Fruit strength.
>>>>>
>>>>>To my mind, the key of Fruit strength is that the "Chess is the art of
>>>>>exchange". So, Fabien's idea about flexible game stages looks to be a beautiful
>>>>>way to improve positional play. Fruit can effectively consolidate the position.
>>>>>It simply knows when to excange to improve position. I think that it's the main
>>>>>key (cumulative with very good tuning of evaluation function). I think Fruit is
>>>>>very perspective. The main line of progress for this project, to my mind, is to
>>>>>add more complicated knowledge and intellectualize a search.
>>>>>
>>>>>2) Rybka
>>>>>
>>>>>Some time ago we discussed with Gian-Carlo Pascutto an idea of create special
>>>>>"SET-tables" with sets of piece-square values indexed by 1) material on the
>>>>>board; 2) king position; 3) pawn structure. Such tables can be calculated by
>>>>>analyzing a lot of games. That time I delayed my work in this area because I
>>>>>found other perspective things.
>>>>>You can see that Rybka executable contains a lot of precalculated tables. And
>>>>>also we all know that Rybka plays positional style. My version is that Rybka
>>>>>uses some variation of SET-approach. At all cases it uses some precalculated
>>>>>positional knowledge, but what sort of it? ;)
>>>>
>>>>My personal opinion:
>>>>
>>>>Fruit wins by 3 things: deep PV checking, mobility, and correctness.  I talked
>>>>about this with Fabien at Reykjavik.  When you have mobility, you are very
>>>>sensitive to being "driven back".  And when you can check your mainline 18-20
>>>>ply and not lose any mobility, its very probably you're playing a good move.
>>>>
>>>>Rybka: I'm starting to think that a lot of Rybka's strength is tactical.  Try
>>>>that baby out on a few test positions some time.  For example, the rapid TC CEGT
>>>>list has Rybka 55 rating points ahead of Fruit, while the slower BFF list has
>>>>Rybka only 15 rating points ahead of Fruit.
>>>>
>>>>anthony
>>>
>>>We need more data. I'll try to put it together when it's all ready.
>>>
>>>One thing people tell me is that Rybka tends to stick with her moves from lower
>>>depths more than other engines. This would also suggest better blitz play.
>>>
>>>Vas
>>
>>In past programs sticking to the same move and showing same mainline was very
>>common. We called it back then preprocessors.
>>
>>Vincent
>
>
>This is interesting. So if I toss the preprocessor, put in the same
>evaluation in the endpoint evaluation instead, my initial move in each
>iteration will more frequently change.
>
>That is interesting.
>
>I hope I did not misunderstand that.

Small problem, Stuart: its not a preprocessor then :)

anthony



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