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Subject: Re: next deep blue

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:28:34 01/22/00

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On January 22, 2000 at 06:01:51, Amir Ban wrote:

>On January 21, 2000 at 22:54:36, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On January 21, 2000 at 17:22:08, Amir Ban wrote:
>>
>>>On January 21, 2000 at 15:08:16, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On January 21, 2000 at 13:56:40, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On January 21, 2000 at 11:44:22, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>It would run so much slower it would get killed tactically.  Remember that their
>>>>>>king safety included not just pawns around the king, but which pieces are
>>>>>>attacking what squares, from long range as well as close range.  Which pieces
>>>>>>are attacking squares close to the king, etc.  That takes a good bit of
>>>>>>computing to discover.
>>>>>
>>>>>I realize that it takes a good bit of computing to discover. But I doubt it
>>>>>takes so much that it's prohibitive. There are very successful micro programs
>>>>>with extremely expensive evaluation functions, e.g., MChess and the King, and to
>>>>>a lesser extent, HIARCS and Zarkov. These programs all reportedly have terms
>>>>>similar to the ones you describe. I seriously doubt that the DB evaluation
>>>>>function is an order of magnitude more complex than, say, MChess's...
>>>>>
>>>>>-Tom
>>>>
>>>
>>>Add Junior to the above list.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>But they don't take the time to find out which pieces are attacking squares
>>>>around the king "through" another piece.  IE a bishop at b2 attacking g7, but
>>>>only if the Nc3 moves.  Or only if the pawn on d4 or e5 moves.  That gets very
>>>>expensive computationally.  DB gets it for nothing.  I think it would slow me
>>>>down by a factor of 100 or more, depending on how far I wanted to take it...
>>>>
>>>>That might make me more aware of king attacks, but it would hide many plies
>>>>worth of tactics since a factor of 100 is over 4 plies.  Only a wild guess
>>>>of course on the factor of 100, but since the eval is done at every node in
>>>>the q-search, this is probably within an order of magnitude or two of the
>>>>real answer.
>>>>
>>>>I can guarantee you it is more complex than the above evaluations.  And I don't
>>>>even know all the things they evaluate.  One new idea mentioned in Hsu's book
>>>>was the concept of "a file that can potentially become open" so that you put
>>>>rooks on that file, even though you can't see exactly how you are going to open
>>>>it within the 15 plies + extensions they were searching.  "Potentially open"
>>>>takes a lot of analysis on the static pawn structure.  I do some of this
>>>>pawn structure analysis myself, and even with pawn hashing it slowed me down
>>>>significantly when I added it a year+ ago to better handle/detect blocked
>>>>positions.
>>>>
>>>>Remember that they claimed about 8,000 static evaluation weights in their
>>>>code, this reported by someone that went to a DB talk by Murray Campbell.
>>>>8000 sounds like a big number...
>>>
>>>It's big, but what does it really mean ? Some of it must have been piece-square
>>>tables for some features that were downloaded from the hosts, and that's
>>>hundreds of entries per feature.
>>>
>>>Besides, where is all this sophistication showing up in the DB & DBjr games ?
>>>Forget the numbers, whatever they mean. Show us the positions & moves.
>>>
>>>Amir
>>
>>
>>It would seem that the _results_ would speak for themselves.  Who else has
>>produced results like theirs?
>
>There is no difference between DB and DBjr in this aspect, and DBjr was
>according to its games an unremarkable machine with unremarkable results.
>
>Amir


Which GM players beat DB Jr in a match?  They played _many_ such matches at
conferences all over the world.  I _never_ saw it lose a game in the three
matches I saw it play against GM players.  One against Byrne.  The others
I didn't really know (IE I wouldn't recognize Dlugy if I bumped into him,
although we have chatted a lot on ICC).

And you say "no difference between DB and DBJr" which I agree with.  But _I_
remember a significant match DB won (the last match it played.)  I would not
call that "unremarkable"...  Until everybody can do it...



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