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Subject: Re: Speed vs. Knowledge Debate Not To Be Decided Soon :-)

Author: Vincent Vega

Date: 13:36:10 02/13/00

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On February 13, 2000 at 01:15:15, Albert Silver wrote:

>It isn't time, it's plies. You said: "I understand that somebody is working on
>confirming whether there is a linear ELO increase with ply depth." I read that
>as an Elo value for each _ply_.

Nope.  He is indeed using plies and this is valid when _one_ program is used.
But you tried comparing _two_ programs using plies which is no-no.  You have to
use time to get anything significant

>MindBlank, as described, knows only the material values, which as far as
>knowledge is concerned, seems to me to be the strict minimum. As such, unless it
>reaches a forced material conclusion, extra time will show it nothing, as I
>expounded above. An example: Mindblank after 10 plies has not found any forced
>win of material for any side. So if it is forced to play now it will take all
>the moves it calculated don't lose material, and flip a coin (metaphorically
>speaking). If at 12 plies it still has not found any forced material win, then
>the same thing will occur. In other words it is absolutely dependant on finding
>something at a deeper ply in order to choose a move that is non-random. Not so
>for CyberGM.

The difference however is that MindBlank should be able to process thousands of
positions in the time it takes CyberGM to look at a single position.  So the
probability that it finds a capture somewhere is much higher.  Also even if
CyberGM’s evaluation is very good, there will still be a great deal of noise as
higher plies are evaluated.

BTW, a real minimalist program NoMind would just look for mates and not even
worry about all that stupid material :-)



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