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Subject: Re: Why Is Everyone Copying Everyone Else?

Author: Andrew Dados

Date: 13:30:46 02/13/00

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On February 13, 2000 at 16:02:27, Vincent Vega wrote:

>On February 13, 2000 at 01:30:07, Andrew Dados wrote:
>
>> 90% of 'amateur' programmers do it to try out some ideas authors have in their
>>mind.
>>And 90% of programmers undertaking this waste of time realizes that neural nets,
>>genetic alghoritms,(quantum computers?!? - how can amateur try that one?) suck
>>when comes down to chess so they don't bother. Some pattern recognition can be
>>found in most programs; while 'knowledge programs' are undef to me, I noticed
>>alpha-beta can be found in 100% of programs both amateur and commercial....  My
>>advice - try out your own.. preferably skip that boring alpha-beta crap. It's
>>fun when you notice chess programming is one of least rewarding hobbies you can
>>have :)
>>
>>-Andrew-
>
>Actually genetic algorithms already proved useful when it comes to determining
>piece values.  Amateurs can try quantum algorithms, there are no real quantum
>computers except 1-bit ones anyway.  And I already wrote a chess program with
>alpha-beta years ago - not much knowledge could be fit in 40-odd KB of memory
>though :-)  Then it was a one-lane road, today it's a 5-lane highway.  What I
>would like to see is chess programs using methods that can be applied to other
>games and AI fields, unfortunately most prefer to just tweak evaluation so the
>knowledge gained can only be applied very narrowly.

Take one, simplest example: basic ending KP vs K. Don Beal wrote a routine for
that; looking at it I can see some 20-30 exceptions which need to be handled
specially. Now applying neural nets or any genetic alghoritm would make my
program learn that ending after some time, sure; it still would not get to play
it perfect in sensible learning time. TDChess does learning using temporal
diference algorithm; takes it a while to get to some sensible 'conclusions'.
Also finger 'morph' on icc - it's rating is close to 1000. I wonder what rating
would totally random-moving program get (or program limited to ply 0 /qsearch/
only). So is writing some 1-3 thousand lines for cute, state of art, hyphe
techniques worth it? For me - maybe in 2 places: to adjust some very limited and
dependand set of wages (like piece values you mentioned), or to try it to
determine best book line upon played games so far. Everything else I can (and
want) to adjust manually...




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