Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: AntiComputer Chess - C.A.P. project?

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 17:52:13 07/06/99

Go up one level in this thread


On July 06, 1999 at 19:33:08, Paul Richards wrote:

>On July 06, 1999 at 13:53:22, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>
>>Don't forget the 'math'.  99.9999999999999% of opening theory does _not_ follow
>>moves like 1. a3 or 1. h3.  So if a GM starts out like that, then the computer
>>is going to be on its own.  And there is no way to make a book wide enough to
>>cover that...
>
>Forgive my ignorance, but why not?  I was under the impression that Mr. Corbit's
>project was doing just that.  In fact it seems conceptually rather easy to
>negate this aspect of anti-computer chess.  Gather whatever theoretical and
>statistical data exists on such offbeat openings, and in the absence of such
>data crunch the resulting positions at suitably long time controls and build a
>book response.  All you need is a big enough book and time to do the analysis.
>The book storage is just a matter of hard drive space, and the time to do the
>analysis would be easy with a large group of volunteers.  I'm happy to let Mr.
>Corbit correct me if I'm wrong, but in a nutshell I believe this is already
>being done.
There are an awful lot of decent looking lines out to (say) 20 ply.  One phase
of the C.A.P. project, which I call "Bulldozer" will brute force the first 5
plies.  Then "encouraging" lines will be explored from there.  Already, by 5
plies, the number of possibilities is surprisingly large.  I am not sure exactly
how large it is, since I have not calculated the "fake" e.p. reductions yet
(those records tagged as e.p. but the e.p. can't have any effect, so just mask
it...)

>Having a team to do analysis also lends itself to some pretty heavy-duty
>learning, in that rather than just flagging moves as bad, if the program gets
>itself into any bad situations or gets taken out of book early, you can produce
>alternate lines or fill in any missing areas rather quickly.  Such a book would
>just keep getting better with time, and I think in time would effectively negate
>this particular anti-computer tactic.  Instead of getting the program out of
>book the GM might find himself either in an unenviably silly position or else
>transposed into a normal opening with a bad move order or a lost tempo.
The C.A.P. project will remain ongoing precisely because the problem is so
large.  And each new level of detail will reduce the probability of serious
difficulties -- but not eliminate it.



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.