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Subject: Re: Conspiracy -- conshmiracy

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:55:57 01/21/00

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On January 21, 2000 at 00:08:13, Michael Neish wrote:

>On January 20, 2000 at 23:19:41, Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>
>>Hyatt & Heinz both did "goes deep" experiments that show no matter how deep you
>>look, you never stop finding improvements.  And each new ply is of approximately
>>the same value as the one before it (but much harder to calculate).
>>
>>GM's, also, can be wrong in their analysis.  So what is the best move from some
>>board position?  Nobody knows.  On the other hand, you *can* rigorously say that
>>for an examination of all the positions up to n plies forward, some move is
>>better than others (assuming you can come to agreement on how to calculate
>>piece, positional, and other value factors consistently).
>
>Well, there's only a limited number of moves in a position, and many of these
>are probably obviously bad.  I suppose what you mean by finding improvements is
>that you can keep switching between possible candidate moves as you search
>deeper, right?  Maybe the computer switches back and forth between axb5 and Qb6
>as it thinks.  I remember reading in some paper that as you get very deep errors
>start to creep in the evaluation, so that after a certain depth, if there is no
>definite tactical objective, you cannot trust the evaluation at all.  I have the
>reference to the paper at home, which I can give you if you're interested.  The
>author said that Chess programmers tend to ignore this phenomenon, which is
>negligible at shallow search depths but becomes more and more serious with
>increasing depth, but that it's there all the same.  But we're digressing.
>

Who wrote that?  My initial thought is 'nonsense'.  Otherwise a 12 ply search
would play positionally worse than an 8 ply search.  And I don't see that at
all.

I can't imagine a 'barrier' that if passed, causes your eval to suddenly start
producing nonsense scores...  so it has to start immediately and would be
apparent starting as we go from 1 to 2, and should be really apparent by the
time we get to the usual 13-14 plies in the middlegame...




>By the way, how about the move Qb6, which (I think) is what Kasparov thought
>every honest computer should play.  Is it some sort of trap that Kasparov had
>laid, which would eventually lead to a draw, or does it also win for White?  If
>Qb6 is good enough to win, then why would the IBM team override a winning move
>with another more elegant winning move selected by a grandmaster?

Mainly because it provides a good excuse.  :)




>
>Cheers,
>
>Mike.



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