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Subject: Re: The Limits of Positional Knowledge

Author: Fernando Villegas

Date: 10:06:45 11/19/99

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Hi Bella...
I have a problem with your way to see this so called "obstructionist" kind of
playing. Its a word with bad echoes and so from the beginning tends to disaprove
certain behaviour. Kind of logical fallacy that curbs the discussion. But then,
if you avoid a bad move and you choose another one, why we must asume that this
"other one" move is just a bit less bad or obtructionist or whatever? Cannot be
that you second choice is really a good move? A move with positional, chess
value? After all, if you put aside obviously bad or irrelevant  moves  -and
certainly currenttop programs do that- the range of choice is not too big. Maybe
in any position are three or at most 4 really sensible moves. Then, if you
reject one or two that produces bad results in the sequence of moves to come,
even because of a sheer matter of chance you can get the very best, although
without knowing a shit about it. But then, what matters is the result, not the
conscience of how to get there.
Years ago I experimented with the old, now museum-piece-of-nostalgy Chess
Challenger Champion. I puted it to play with the best move function and then
with ramdom and soon I discovered that many times random produced better
results. Why? Because even random was aplied to only a narrow set of decent
moves -those above certain score, I presume- and so randomness let the computer
to avoid many times the inbuilt mistakes of his "best" programming.
Kisses from fernando



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