Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 22:41:09 01/28/00
Go up one level in this thread
On January 27, 2000 at 13:51:01, Christophe Theron wrote: >On January 26, 2000 at 18:28:22, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>On January 26, 2000 at 18:23:50, Bruce Moreland wrote: >> >>>On January 26, 2000 at 18:10:10, Dann Corbit wrote: >>> >>>>IOW, more horsepower is a tough way to make chess programs play better. There >>>>is also evidence (according to some) that the increase in speed has >>>>*diminishing* returns. Hence, it may take a terahertz to get there. Don't know >>>>of any material that could do that, not even a Josephson Junction. >>> >>>I think it's a great way. You just take a vacation, preferably a long one, and >>>when you come back you make one call to Gateway and poof, free Elo points. >>> >>>Got an article that shows that the Elo curve flattens out with increased depth? >> >>Darn. I knew someone would ask that! I just read it somewhere, but I will have >>to go and look for it now. >>:-( > > >Just my 2 cents: this "dimishing returns" theory is an urban legend. > >You are almost certain to have seen this demonstrated, you'll find people that >will tell you they have seen this demonstrated, but you'll eventually find no >proof of this. > >But everybody wants to believe it because it fits so well our common sense. When >everybody in a group believes in something, it eventually because "real" for >this group. > >Computer chess is CROWDED with legends like this one. > >The programmers that do better than their peers are those who do not believe >these legends. > Christophe Chess is a tough game. Draughts is a tough game. perhaps even tougher for now as chess, as a national player can easily beat any draughtsprogram, though those find any combination of any world champion at blitz level. Draughts is an ideal testcase as branching factor is very small there. Of course not only programs search deep, humans too. Positions the program doesn't understand it doesn't matter what depth it searches. I simply don't see better moves at bigger depths. it has a certain move, or it doubts between 2 bad moves. That from ply 12 til ply 29 usually. Deduction from draughts to chess gives your proof of diminishing returns. Now we can fight here for years about it, and we will sure do, but just make a draughtsprogram, join the tournaments, and you'll know it very soon after you start testing at positions it did wrong in either endgame, opening, or middlegame. With a small computer you can already do tests at night which require incredible mighty machines. At tournament level we search like 12 to 14 ply at 60 moves in 60 minutes (so 1 minute a move). At overnight tests its depth goes easily to near to 30 ply. Talking about opening now. Further up in game and near endgame you already search in game at incredible depths. The whole diminishing return depth issue is easily solved by looking at that game which seemingly is a lot simpler than chess (from branching factor viewpoint). Only after starting to study it you see problems where in computerchess world we also get confronted with. More and more you see how tough it is for programs to win endgames. How tough it is for them to make better moves if the knowledge isn't there, how games do not get tactical decided (even in blitz you slowly start seeing that in some games from computer-computer), etcetera. Seen that already years ago in draughts computer games... Vincent
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