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Subject: Re: Chess Tiger's Playing Style?

Author: blass uri

Date: 12:50:50 11/18/99

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On November 18, 1999 at 14:52:20, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On November 18, 1999 at 03:18:19, blass uri wrote:
>
>>On November 17, 1999 at 20:38:38, Thorsten Czub wrote:
>>
>>>On November 17, 1999 at 19:01:57, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>
>>>>No Chris, you don't get it. If you prune too much on material criterias you
>>>>completely destroy the positional skills of the program.
>>>
>>>Chris, ahem, or Bella , or whoever you are, and Christophe!
>>>
>>>Hi !
>>>
>>>
>>>I don't think tiger plays fast-chess.
>>>it plays very nice chess. positional alike.
>>>
>>>
>>>>If I wanted to go deeper tactically, I could do it easily. I think I could go 2
>>>>plies deeper. But in this case my program would be completely crushed because of
>>>>incredible positional holes.
>>>>
>>>>Before the game goes on a tactical field, my program would have a totally lost
>>>>position.
>>>
>>>>Each time I have tried to sacrifice the positional understanding to get deeper,
>>>>it was a disaster. I have found that it works in the opposite direction: with
>>>>better positional understanding the program goes deeper. Because it sees the
>>>>right moves earlier, and spends less time analyzing sonense moves.
>>>
>>>Right. The more the program knows, the more it sees in the search.
>>>Tiger has completely different evaluation than any other program
>>>in most cases.
>>>
>>>If you want i can present lots of games and positions where tiger evaluates
>>>DIFFERENT. often 2 or 3 pawns different than hiarcs/fritz/others.
>>>
>>>Why ?
>>>Because it knows and comes also deeper.
>>>And it seems it evaluates a special thing much higher than any other program.
>>>i am sure i know what it is. but i will not say it. a secret so far.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>You make it sound as if I had found a very specific way to shoot on a very
>>>>specific weakness of a very specific subset of chess programs.
>>>>
>>>>You make it sound as if I was not programming chess.
>>>
>>>>You completely overlook the fact that several testers including our friend
>>>>Thorsten have noticed that Chess Tiger has a large amplitude in its evaluation
>>>>function. It's usual to see Tiger at +1.90 when the opponent is still close to
>>>>0.00.
>>>
>>>Right. As i said :-))) it has a big evaluation function and very often has
>>>completely different evaluation trend than the opponent.
>>>and it wins. that makes it funny.
>>>i like it because it is different. as chess system tal is.
>>
>>I do not think that the word bigger is right.
>>It probably has a better evaluation function.
>>
>>The quality of the evaluation is relevant and not the size of the evaluation
>>function.
>>
>>Uri
>
>
>Quality and quantity in this case are related. If you have a lousy evaluation
>function and do not trust it, you make it "small", that is for example always
>returning values in the interval [-0.75;+0.75].
>
>We all know many chess programs evaluating their position at -0.75 when they
>have a dead lost position but material is still equal.
>
>These chess program would happily accept the lost position if they can capture a
>pawn in exchange.
>
>With a "big" positional evaluation function, a program would never take the pawn
>and save its position.
>
>So if you have a good positional evaluation function f(P) (that does not take
>material into account), you can use f(P)/10 in your score or use f(P)*2.
>
>Both versions will play exactly the same moves in many positions. The difference
>will be seen only when there is a choice like giving a pawn against a very good
>position. In this case the "big" evaluation will coureagously accept the deal,
>when the "small" evaluation version will stick to material balance only and play
>boring.
>
>You see what I mean. With a given quality positional evaluation, it's possible
>to play on the scale of this positional evaluation and the scale makes a
>difference.
>
>
>    Christophe

I understand now that thorsten probably meant by the word big to the value of
the not material evaluation.

The evaluation includes both the material scores and the positional
scores and I did not understand that you define  big evaluation function as
evaluation when the positional score is relatively big.

I thought that he meant by the word big to the number of commands you need to
evaluate when slow searchers have a bigger evaluation by this definition.

Uri



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