Author: Marc van Hal
Date: 14:17:30 11/11/99
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On November 11, 1999 at 03:37:10, Michael Neish wrote: > >Hello, > >I sent in a question to rec.games.chess.computer a while ago about how best to >improve a newly-written Chess program, either by sharpening up its search >routine or by programming a better positional sense. In reply I was recommended >to study the available source code for ideas. > >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. > >To Dr. Hyatt, who was one of those who replied to me: have you ever tried >feeding nonsensical positional variables to Crafty to see how its play is >affected? Okay, maybe nonsensical values will ruin the evaluation function >completely (like a value of 5,000 for putting the Queen on a1) but what about >different weighting values from the one you use in Crafty, but still sensible? >Won't the values that enable Crafty to search for the right move in one position >be useless (or detrimental) in other positions? What difference can it make for >the Bishop to get a score of 32 instead of 30 for landing on e4? Wouldn't >incurring a heavy penalty for moving, say, Pawn to h5 in a front of your castled >King prevent Crafty from playing h5 when it would be correct to do so? You will >of course excuse me for not having studied every single line of Crafty's code. >:) > >Thanks for your time. > >Mike. Wich program has realy positional knowledge? I gues the answer is none only a litle but not in the long term long term plans I tryed to do the same with Rebel Century as I did with Chessmaster givving Rebel a higher valeu for the knight wich didn't work because Rebel did not use the pawns to suport the fields for the knight for instance a pawn on a5 and a Knight on c5 this is the real positional knowledge for creating strong positional points. Bussy with personeletys a pawn is not 1.00 as the oponent has a lot more mobiletybut about 0.25 I saw some personeletys in a sicilian play the move Knfd7 after the move g4 wich is positionaly the best move in many cases cause it takes way the presure a bit so black builds up a litle counterplay I gues posional play is still far away for computer programs I don't mean that they don't have positional knowledge at all but not in finding by creating long term positional advantages I gues when they can do this without a doubt the will rule and win against all gm's
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