Author: Steffen Jakob
Date: 02:39:52 11/11/99
Go up one level in this thread
On November 11, 1999 at 04:45:50, Bruce Moreland wrote: >On November 11, 1999 at 03:37:10, Michael Neish wrote: > > >>This has led me to another question. Supposing you stubbornly insist on using >>alpha-beta, and not add any of the sophisticated embellishments that everyone >>talks about (killer move, null move, etc). How far can you expect to go just on >>programming positional sense alone? I ask this because it seems to me (as >>someone mentioned only last week on rgcc) that positional sense in a program is >>to a large extent only window dressing, and that the strength in a program lies >>mainly in its ability to search deep. From my meagre experience as a Chess >>programmer it seems to me that positional sense provides nothing more than >>general pointers to the program to play sensibly. > >If you don't refine the search, you'll get some nice evaluations of lost >positions. > >Positional terms can help you avoid voluntarily entering bad positions, but you >can lose tactically in positions that aren't bad, and you can be forced into >positions you know are bad due to tactical mistakes. But positional scores can also produce good tactical moves, where you had to search for ages to compute the same move if you didn´t have the positional terms. E.g. I handle the classical bishop sac on h7 or some piece sacs at h6 where black has castled king side and has pawns like f7,g7,h6 and white can play e.g. Bxh6 with a strong attack. I think in the original posting only small positional scores where meant but that´s not the whole story. Greetings, Steffen. Greetings, Steffen.
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.