Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Chess Tiger's Playing Style?

Author: Ed Schröder

Date: 00:38:15 11/19/99

Go up one level in this thread


On November 18, 1999 at 18:35:02, Thorsten Czub wrote:

>What i wanted to say is:
>
>We have programs like
>
>Mchess
>Hiarcs
>CSTal
>Tiger.
>
>They all evaluate positions in a big range of scores.
>Higher positional or speculative scores than other programs.
>
>But -
>Most often when you see Mchess/Hiarcs/Cstal evaluate the positions
>and also from iteration to iteration and often within an interation
>you see the score jump and fail-high, fail-low, changes etc.
>
>Tiger is different.
>It has the same high range to evaluate, but from first second of computation
>to the play out the move the jumps and the score is not changing much.
>
>the score increases or decreases very close to the end-result.
>it gets a fail-high or a fail-low or whatever window, and the next
>big main-line is only 1/100 of a pawn better or weaker.
>it all goes more smooth. more like a wave, not like a quantum leap.
>not jumping but flowing like a river.
>
>anmon has this kind of evaluation too, but still different to tiger.
>
>IMO what happens when cstal score jumps or hiarcs score jumps or mchess
>score jumps is that the evaluation get more precise,
>but the search gets unprecise or say better: ineffective in these moments.
>
>Not with tiger.
>Tigers score get more and more precise, but in the same moment the
>search gets NOT corrupted by score-jumps.
>It can't because it does not JUMP-.
>
>So the search is not inefficient although the score changes.
>
>This seems to be optimal IMO.
>it leads to the fact that tiger goes deeper, and wins.
>If another program gets deeper than tiger, it does not matter because
>the tree of the other program is not accurate. the lines the other
>program that comes deeper than tiger construct are not reality, but dreaming.
>
>so the strength of tiger comes IMO from a combination of
>a) very efficient search
>b) very clever handling of HOW to use the knowledge the way
>that it differenciates different branches, but does not corrupt
>the search process. A kind of clever selective mechanism.
>
>Therefore tiger can play positional AND can be outsearch
>(e.g. Fritz6).
>
>I have played and seen tiger kill fritz6 in 40/120 games
>on my machines 11.5-6.5 and i got 50% against fritz5.32
>(fritz5.32 searches deeper than fritz6).
>Tiger is something special.
>it will be a class better than the old programs.
>you will see.
>i am sure all other programs will have to copy christophes ideas
>sooner or later, otherwise they will not be able to stop him.
>
>rebel can much profit from the joint-forces of christophe and ed.
>tiger gets all the cleverness of old fox ed and his tiny tricks
>that change the program massively, and ed gets many ideas from christophe
>how to make search and comp-comp more efficient.
>
>What worries me the most in the moment is the opening book.
>Jeroen has to get that human-chess opening-theory (game vs. nimzo,
>game vs. diep, game vs. quest) has nothing to do in a tournament
>opening book for comp-comp tournaments.
>
>these modern and new and long lines do STOP the engines from
>showing their possibilities.
>
>I hope jeroen would make a new book with NO human-opening theory within.
>or almost low percentage.
>and look for forced but balanced positions, and not
>kings-indian main-stream stuff and other openings like the shit big
>theory line against nimzo.

You are quite right on the book issue. Jeroen has a double task now as
he has to maintain 2 books from now on, one for Rebel (just normal and
sharp opening theory) and one for Tiger a modified version that is more
solid.

The Rebel book plays all human theory as sharp as possible including
all kind of sacrifices. I often see Rebel go out of book with a -1.50
score having a good compensation of course. This is fine for playing
humans but not (always) such a good idea playing against other computers.

It's Jeroens intention to avoid these kind of lines in the Tiger book as
we noticed very soon that Tiger does a lot better in comp-comp if more
solid opening lines are played.

In the final version of Rebel-Tiger you already will have a more solid
Rebel book. However it will take Jeroen several years to finish this
job.

Ed



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.