Author: Ratko V Tomic
Date: 14:49:32 10/10/99
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>You play that much games ?? I'm impressed. Maybe make a bigger tree/book not to >get the same position again. Or _you_ can not play the same again ?! > Even though programs have hundreds of thousands of moves in their books, they're weighed highly non-uniformly, so you do end up playing lots of Sicilian and French. I play maybe 20-30 games a week (more when the program is brand new), usually at 15-30 seconds/move. Since I haven't studied openings for over a decade, my repertoire isn't that wide and combined with program's weights it produces every day at least one line we played before where it calculates, over several moves out of the book, the same thing with the same result as before. >>Since human player doesn't fall for (and doesn't appreciate someone even >>trying out) such idiotic tricks, > > Its not a trick. If you play against someone and have sucess with one > line, will you play it again or not ? This is just normal. > Well, my losses against the programs have rarely any relation with the opening, but mostly to overlooked tactical shot or two far later in the game. Since I like to play open games with sharp double-edged lines anyway, any of them should suit program's style (which might not play well in closed positions). I think that this type of attribution of success to particular opening line assumes progam is playing against another program, where it is a matter of chance for a given line to have a trap at some point after the book, i.e. a position where move which looks the best one at depth D (plus whatever extensions are used) is very bad at depth D+1. That's why many programmers insist on testing their programs with tuned book, since the prorgams are very sensitive to such chance ocurences in the line. Also, I am not sure about your goal when playing against a program, but I certainly am not out to score maximum number of points. If a program plays some line poorly, after finding it I avoid it anyway (now with learning off, I have to do that from time to time; few years back, when programs were weaker, I had to do that more often). Also, with some programs which have some basic weaknesses (e.g. Junior gladly enters blocked position, even helps me block it, then shuffles aimlessly rooks in the background), I either don't play against it much, and when I do, I avoid using it against the program. My motivation is to have a challenging game, where each move is a puzzle to be solved, and where the outcome always hangs on the edge, and after each move the side which moved looks better. Why would one want to solve identical puzzle over and over? >> the feature is not only useless but outright contrary >>to the customer's convenience. He can either play the same line ad infinitum >>(with "learning" on) or waste time waiting for mindless repetition of the >>identical calculation. > >Either win against it and it will drop the line or improve your >understanding of the position, which is certainly necessairy if you >keep loosing. > Again, the losses have nothing to do with the opening line. Most games lost are in a fairly nice position, in late middle game or endgame, due to tactical oversight. No relation to the opening line. And even if I had that kind of time (and interest) to work out in depth some opening line, most lines do not have an outright refutation anyway but offer various plans of play which may bear fruit in a better endgame, provided you don't overlook some tactical shot in the meantime. >I agree here, also a all programs should have a smal "random evaluation". I would like to see a well implemented feature like that too. Unfortunately, when I have seen it in some programs, setting "random" to ON meant too random and produced a weaker play. >> But it certainly >>should not drop the whole Sicilian or French, or even a particular line, just >>because it lost few games in that (perfectly good) opening/line for completely >>unrelated reasons well beyond the opening. > >maybe true. > Well, it happened with Fritz 5.32 in the first days I got it. After it lost couple Sicilians, I could not make it play c5, other than by navigating manually its opening tree (might as well go and read an opening book instead of playing a game, would be more fun).
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