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Subject: Re: EGTB access and playing strength

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:07:17 01/29/06

Go up one level in this thread


On January 29, 2006 at 22:32:31, Stuart Cracraft wrote:

>On January 29, 2006 at 21:40:18, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On January 29, 2006 at 19:10:52, Stuart Cracraft wrote:
>>
>>>On January 29, 2006 at 10:45:28, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On January 29, 2006 at 09:52:57, Kurt Utzinger wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On January 29, 2006 at 09:38:56, Majd Al-Ansari wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>I have a completely different result.  I see quite a big difference and many
>>>>>>"won" games are now won instead of drawn.
>>>>>
>>>>>      Please be good enough to present those results
>>>>>      here. This would be of great interest.
>>>>>      Kurt
>>>>>
>>>>>I have checked out quite a few games
>>>>>>and I will say that EGTB's greately improve endgame play for Rybka, and plug a
>>>>>>lot of holes.
>>>>>
>>>>>      This is contrary to long experience with other engines
>>>>>      where you can almost see no difference regarding overall
>>>>>      score after playing some hundred games.
>>>>>      Kurt
>>>>>
>>>>> EGTB are especially important if the other side has them.  Not
>>>>>>having them will leak a lot of points.  Still there is quite a ways to go for
>>>>>>Rybka when endgames are concerned.  It still plays some endings horribly.  But
>>>>>>the gaps are getting smaller and smaller and I am very interested to see how
>>>>>>Rybka will be with beta 14 (EG knowledge added).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>One note:
>>>>
>>>>Playing EGTB vs NoEGTB to see if EGTB helps is probably the wrong way to measure
>>>>the experiment.  It is more useful to take a known good program _with_ EGTBs,
>>>>and play your favorite engine against it, with your engine not using 'em, then
>>>>playing again with 'em.  If the opponent doesn't have 'em, then your not having
>>>>them might not expose the problem as well as making sure your opponent can
>>>>always win those tricky cases and you now have to rely only on your eval to hang
>>>>on...
>>>
>>>Also - I think the sample size has to be MUCH larger than what we are talking.
>>>
>>>A few hundred games is not going to do it.
>>>
>>>Start with a few thousand for the EGTB and work your way up from there.
>>>
>>>Stuart
>>
>>
>>The general rule-of-thumb is that the closer two programs are in skill, the more
>>games you need to really see whether one is better or not....
>
>Yes - I'd be interested to know of any papers that have been done to quanity
>the magnitude of the difference and the magnitude of games both.
>
>Stuart


Never seen any.  Just seen enough results over time that proved this to be an
accurate assessment. :)



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