Rebel-Crafty NPS Challenge

[Amir Ban]

Congratulations Ed.

The first game is really proving your point. Whom did you bribe to make this happen ? I
knew that a 100-time speedup can mean nothing against a master, but I was skeptical
about computer-computer games.

It's obvious that Crafty doesn't understand this game, and this is making all the
difference so far: Refusing to trade queens, that horrible 22... Rb8 (how about Rc8 and
putting some pressure on the C file weakness ?). Bob posted here that Crafty counts the
passed e5 pawn as a big asset. It's really killing Black's game and Black should get
rid of it when given the chance. The chance, I think, came and went with 25. h5 gxh5?
missing 25... e4 to create an unclear mess. Anyone has a deep analysis of this ?

I wonder how many times in this match Rebel would be allowed to play such a game.

Another point for the NPS debate, and the importance of evaluations: A human master as
Black here would be thinking how he can offer a pawn to free himself. If Black can
stabilize his game with a pawn less, he has chances. Rebel with current eval (0.81)
would maybe take it, maybe not. Crafty with an eval of 0.46 would grab it, and
certainly doesn't think of offering it.

Amir

[Robert Hyatt]

Amir Ban (ami...@msys.co.il) wrote:
: Congratulations Ed.

: The first game is really proving your point. Whom did you bribe to make this happen ? I
: knew that a 100-time speedup can mean nothing against a master, but I was skeptical
: about computer-computer games.

: It's obvious that Crafty doesn't understand this game, and this is making all the
: difference so far: Refusing to trade queens, that horrible 22... Rb8

Rb8's not so terribly horrible. If you search to about ply=16, I believe
that Rc8 loses something. We ran a lot of analysis here one night, because
I liked Rc8 (as did crafty until some ungodly deep depth.)

However, as I posted before, I'd bet that if you let any program play the
black side of this, from about move 20 or so, they'd lose pretty quickly
because some of the tactics are quite deep. I've tried it with genius and
it simply doesn't find many of the right moves for black unless you give it
the same huge time handicap. Point being that the deeper search is helping,
but in this game (at least) Crafty was more concerned about the e-pawn than
the kingside attack. Game's not over by any stretch however...

One minor point here is that this game is not a convincing argument that
5 plies means nothing. In this game, Crafty happens to value passed pawns
quite highly, a result of tuning to play against humans. As a result, if
you count pawns, you'll notice who has one and who doesn't. Now whether
or not that is the goal in *this* game is obviously another issue. But so
far, Crafty has been able to accomplish what it "thought" was the right
things. If it's eval is out of whack, that's another issue altogether.
However if you want to join the bandwagon that 100X speed means nothing,
you're free to do so. But I'll bet you are just like me, when the p6/400
comes out, you'll be right there on it as well, to get that paltry 2x
speedup that means "less than nothing." :)

As far as trading queens, Crafty generally won't do that unless one side's
king is significantly more exposed than the other's. In this game, both
kings are somewhat exposed. It's playing just like I'd want to see it play
against a human. Keep it complicated and wait for a mistake. Against a
computer that might not be the right strategy. Against humans it is working
very well.

: (how about Rc8 and

: putting some pressure on the C file weakness ?). Bob posted here that Crafty counts the
: passed e5 pawn as a big asset. It's really killing Black's game and Black should get
: rid of it when given the chance. The chance, I think, came and went with 25. h5 gxh5?
: missing 25... e4 to create an unclear mess. Anyone has a deep analysis of this ?

: I wonder how many times in this match Rebel would be allowed to play such a game.

: Another point for the NPS debate, and the importance of evaluations: A human master as
: Black here would be thinking how he can offer a pawn to free himself. If Black can
: stabilize his game with a pawn less, he has chances. Rebel with current eval (0.81)
: would maybe take it, maybe not. Crafty with an eval of 0.46 would grab it, and
: certainly doesn't think of offering it.

Current analysis by Crafty is that it seems to be planning on sacrificing the
exchange to rip the bishop attacking f7, and picking up the c2 pawn with check
as well, although I'm not going to let it run for 10 hours here to produce
exactly what Ed's seeing over there. Whether it should give up the e-pawn
instead is a question of course. In Crafty's case, it's holding on to that
for dear life...

: Amir

[Ed Schroder]

From: Amir Ban <ami...@msys.co.il>

: Congratulations Ed.

: The first game is really proving your point. Whom did you bribe to
: make this happen ? I knew that a 100-time speedup can mean nothing
: against a master, but I was skeptical about computer-computer games.

: It's obvious that Crafty doesn't understand this game, and this is
: making all the difference so far: Refusing to trade queens, that

: horrible 22... Rb8 (how about Rc8 and putting some pressure on the C

: file weakness ?). Bob posted here that Crafty counts the passed e5
: pawn as a big asset. It's really killing Black's game and Black should
: get rid of it when given the chance.

: The chance, I think, came and went with 25. h5 gxh5? missing 25... e4
: to create an unclear mess. Anyone has a deep analysis of this ?

Rebel8 expected (would have played) this move with incredible wild
tactics.

: I wonder how many times in this match Rebel would be allowed to play
: such a game.

: Another point for the NPS debate, and the importance of evaluations:
: A human master as Black here would be thinking how he can offer a pawn
: to free himself. If Black can stabilize his game with a pawn less, he
: has chances. Rebel with current eval (0.81) would maybe take it, maybe
: not. Crafty with an eval of 0.46 would grab it, and certainly doesn't
: think of offering it.

: Amir

At the moment game-1 looks as follows:

[Event "The Crafty-Rebel NPS challenge"]
[Site "Deventer, The Netherlans"]
[Date "1997.03.07"]
[Round "1"]
[White "REBEL 8.0"]
[Black "CRAFTY 11.17"]
[Result "*"]
[ECO "B20"]

1. e4 c5 2. b3 d6 3. Bb2 Nf6 4. Nc3 g6 5. g3 Bg7 6. Bg2 0-0 7. Nge2 e5
8. 0-0 Nc6 9. f4 c4 10. Kh1 cxb3 11. axb3 Bg4 12. h3 Bxe2 13. Nxe2 Re8
14. f5 d5 15. exd5 Nxd5 16. Kh2 a6 17. Be4 Qd7 18. fxg6 hxg6 19. Nc3 Nxc3
20. dxc3 Qc7 21. Bd5 Nd8 22. Qf3 Rb8 23. Rad1 Ne6 24. h4 b5 25. h5 gxh5
26. Qxh5 Rb6 27. Kg2 Nd8 28. Bc1 a5 29. Be4 Ne6 30. Be3 *

Rebel8 score 1.41
Crafty after 7 hours is on ply 14, score -1.547 planning Ra6 failing low.

One thing game-1 already proves...
In this game Crafty thinks average 4 plies deeper than Rebel due to the
100 x time advantage. Still Crafty is in deep trouble. Bob said Rebel's
evaluation function is better than Crafty's evaluation function. I agree
with Bob for game-1. Game2-10 will tell us more.

Coming to my point: Doesn't game-1 already prove that an evaluation
function is (can be) worth many many plies?

I am not speaking about Rebel but generally...

- Ed Schroder -

Rebel's chances to win this game are looking good but I think
Crafty can hold the king attack and perhaps force an ending with one
(or two?) pawns down. Game-1 is certainly not over yet.

[Robert Hyatt]

Ed Schroder (rebc...@xs4all.nl) wrote:

: At the moment game-1 looks as follows:

: [Event "The Crafty-Rebel NPS challenge"]
: [Site "Deventer, The Netherlans"]
: [Date "1997.03.07"]
: [Round "1"]
: [White "REBEL 8.0"]
: [Black "CRAFTY 11.17"]
: [Result "*"]
: [ECO "B20"]

: 1. e4 c5 2. b3 d6 3. Bb2 Nf6 4. Nc3 g6 5. g3 Bg7 6. Bg2 0-0 7. Nge2 e5
: 8. 0-0 Nc6 9. f4 c4 10. Kh1 cxb3 11. axb3 Bg4 12. h3 Bxe2 13. Nxe2 Re8
: 14. f5 d5 15. exd5 Nxd5 16. Kh2 a6 17. Be4 Qd7 18. fxg6 hxg6 19. Nc3 Nxc3
: 20. dxc3 Qc7 21. Bd5 Nd8 22. Qf3 Rb8 23. Rad1 Ne6 24. h4 b5 25. h5 gxh5
: 26. Qxh5 Rb6 27. Kg2 Nd8 28. Bc1 a5 29. Be4 Ne6 30. Be3 *

: Rebel8 score 1.41
: Crafty after 7 hours is on ply 14, score -1.547 planning Ra6 failing low.

: One thing game-1 already proves...
: In this game Crafty thinks average 4 plies deeper than Rebel due to the
: 100 x time advantage. Still Crafty is in deep trouble. Bob said Rebel's
: evaluation function is better than Crafty's evaluation function. I agree
: with Bob for game-1. Game2-10 will tell us more.

: Coming to my point: Doesn't game-1 already prove that an evaluation
: function is (can be) worth many many plies?

Yes... and don't forget that I've never said otherwise. If you look at my
original statement "two equivalent programs... a 3-4-5 ply search advantage
by one is *very* significant."

The thing I see, which was a minor irritant in 11.17, is that due to a change
I made, the evaluation for passed pawns went somewhat higher than I planned. If
you look at each of the moves Crafty has made so far, they all revolve around the
passed e pawn. At nearly every move, as it searches deeper than Rebel by a big
margin, it's found a way to hold that pawn, even if it means giving up something
somewhere else. And it continued to do that until it was too late to save it,

I have fixed a couple of bugs that have caused a few problems in game 1, and will
have an executable ready for when game 2 begins. The main one is that if the
game has to be re-started, Crafty won't spend 2x the normal time on the first
move after the restart, which is a big waste here since the reason for doing this
is to offset the fact that the trans/ref table has no useful info in it. After
a huge search it *still* has no useful info in it. :) The next "problem" I
found is that when game 2 starts, with Crafty using a book (I hope it seems
to work this time) it can easily reach move 30 in book. That's going to make
the last 10 moves in the time control take *forever*. I had an upper bound on
the time for a single move of 2x the simple time-control average. That was
taken out before Jakarta, but is probably a good idea here, otherwise the first
non-book move could take 18000/10*1.4*2 minutes, which is going to be about
3 days or so...

: I am not speaking about Rebel but generally...

[Hans-Henrik Grand]

>From: Amir Ban <ami...@msys.co.il>

>: Congratulations Ed.

>: Amir

>At the moment game-1 looks as follows:

>[Event "The Crafty-Rebel NPS challenge"]
>[Site "Deventer, The Netherlans"]
>[Date "1997.03.07"]
>[Round "1"]
>[White "REBEL 8.0"]
>[Black "CRAFTY 11.17"]
>[Result "*"]
>[ECO "B20"]

>1. e4 c5 2. b3 d6 3. Bb2 Nf6 4. Nc3 g6 5. g3 Bg7 6. Bg2 0-0 7. Nge2 e5
>8. 0-0 Nc6 9. f4 c4 10. Kh1 cxb3 11. axb3 Bg4 12. h3 Bxe2 13. Nxe2 Re8
>14. f5 d5 15. exd5 Nxd5 16. Kh2 a6 17. Be4 Qd7 18. fxg6 hxg6 19. Nc3 Nxc3
>20. dxc3 Qc7 21. Bd5 Nd8 22. Qf3 Rb8 23. Rad1 Ne6 24. h4 b5 25. h5 gxh5
>26. Qxh5 Rb6 27. Kg2 Nd8 28. Bc1 a5 29. Be4 Ne6 30. Be3 *

>Rebel8 score 1.41
>Crafty after 7 hours is on ply 14, score -1.547 planning Ra6 failing low.

At least they seem to agree abaut the eval now.
Previously crafty and Rebel disagreed a lot abaut the eval.

>One thing game-1 already proves...
>In this game Crafty thinks average 4 plies deeper than Rebel due to the
>100 x time advantage. Still Crafty is in deep trouble. Bob said Rebel's
>evaluation function is better than Crafty's evaluation function. I agree
>with Bob for game-1. Game2-10 will tell us more.

And given the result of the match at normal tournament level (4-0 in
Rebels favour), it proves that crafty is not tuned for playing an opponent
like Rebel (or Rebel simply is better).

>Coming to my point: Doesn't game-1 already prove that an evaluation
>function is (can be) worth many many plies?

So far it does. But I think Robert H. is still working on the eval that
has contained known bugs in the past. E.G. Crafty brought it's queen to
early in play which gave it serious problems in many games, when it came
early out of book. This proves that programmers should worry, abaut how
to make the eval good already, when making the search engine. Probably,
R. Hyatt has been doing this, but when reading the ChangeLog in the
main.c it seems, that speed is what the author considered most important
for the beginning.

>I am not speaking about Rebel but generally...

I think we all new that. But now it has been made even more clear.

>Rebel's chances to win this game are looking good but I think
>Crafty can hold the king attack and perhaps force an ending with one
>(or two?) pawns down. Game-1 is certainly not over yet.

But Rebel is still playing for the win, and is very unlikely to loose,
even when playing with 4 plies less than Crafty. Also Rebel is unlikely
to make a tactical blunder, as the search for Rebel already is deep.

Would Kasparov be able to win this position against Deep Blue ?
I think the Deep Blue team must be working harder on their software
rather than their hardware...

Perhaps the eval should be modified so that when playing a human opponent,
It would give at least a pawn to stear towards tactical complications.
Another good idea, suggested earlier here by Palle Mathiesen, would be
to exchange pawns in order to create open positions with more tactics to
follow.

Greetings /hhg
--
-=((--------------------------------------------------))=-
-==(((Your computer is the best. However, mine is better)))==-
-=((--------------------------------------------------))=-

[Hans-Henrik Grand]

In <5grh51$n...@juniper.cis.uab.edu> hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) writes:

>Hans-Henrik Grand (h...@daimi.aau.dk) wrote:
[snip]

>: Perhaps the eval should be modified so that when playing a human opponent,

>: It would give at least a pawn to stear towards tactical complications.
>: Another good idea, suggested earlier here by Palle Mathiesen, would be
>: to exchange pawns in order to create open positions with more tactics to
>: follow.

>Depends. Crafty does exactly this all the time. And generally won't try to
>trade queens unless it is in real trouble, which is the right strategy against
>a tactically weaker player (human). But against computers, it often does backfire.
>Chris's sort of search/eval plays right into Crafty's strength and the search speed
>of Crafty overwhelms it generally. Crafty's speculative eval plays right into
>Ferret's strength, and the same happens to Crafty. I carefully analyzed a set of
>4 games from last week, where crafty won 1 and lost 3 vs Ferret. In every game,
>Crafty was at +1 positionally (1 whole pawn), and in looking at the positions, I
>was not uncomfortable with any of them. Unfortunately, in three of them it
>ended up at +.3, which is not bad, until you count pawns and get -1... so it
>gave up a pawn in three games to open things up or create complications. And it
>got a typical "computer response" for doing so. I don't plan (at present) on
>trying to change the way I do business here, because I'm not nearly as interested
>in tuning for computers as I am in tuning for humans. And it's going to cause
>problems at times. The Shredder game at the last WMCCC event was a good example
>of how this can backfire, as crafty defended very well against a good attack, but
>then went for a complication of its own doing, after the attack was over, and
>found a way to ignore a fairly deep mate threat by playing too aggressively in the
>position. It's a problem. I'd even considered two evals, referenced by a pointer,
>so that it can be changed depending on whether Crafty plays a computer or not, but
>it somehow felt unsatisfying to do so.. :)
I really can't see anything wrong with that.
Playing computers is not the same as playing humans, and I play different
depending on the opponent. Having different evals seems like a good idea.
You might even consider having another eval for lightning (icc bullet),
and smaller hash tables, so the initialisation becomes faster.

[Robert Hyatt]

Hans-Henrik Grand (h...@daimi.aau.dk) wrote:

: >From: Amir Ban <ami...@msys.co.il>

: >: Congratulations Ed.

: >: Amir

:

I also need to find out from Moritz what kind of book he sent to ed, and
whether or not it had the "learn.dat" imported into it. The book selection
algorithm depends heavily on the learned results. If there are none, then
it will play lots of bad openings until it learns what is what. a result
of 4-0 is unexpected, but not improbable. It will be more interesting if it
ends up 20-0. I have (so far) played 4 40/120 games with rebel 8 here on
equal hardware (P6/200) and the result was 1 win for Crafty, one draw, and
2 losses. They are difficult to play in manual mode of course...

: >Coming to my point: Doesn't game-1 already prove that an evaluation

: >function is (can be) worth many many plies?

: So far it does. But I think Robert H. is still working on the eval that
: has contained known bugs in the past. E.G. Crafty brought it's queen to
: early in play which gave it serious problems in many games, when it came
: early out of book. This proves that programmers should worry, abaut how
: to make the eval good already, when making the search engine. Probably,
: R. Hyatt has been doing this, but when reading the ChangeLog in the
: main.c it seems, that speed is what the author considered most important
: for the beginning.
:
: >I am not speaking about Rebel but generally...

: I think we all new that. But now it has been made even more clear.

: >Rebel's chances to win this game are looking good but I think
: >Crafty can hold the king attack and perhaps force an ending with one
: >(or two?) pawns down. Game-1 is certainly not over yet.

: But Rebel is still playing for the win, and is very unlikely to loose,
: even when playing with 4 plies less than Crafty. Also Rebel is unlikely
: to make a tactical blunder, as the search for Rebel already is deep.

However, the "unlikely to make a blunder" is probably an overstatement.
The easy way to confirm this is to run any program against the Nolot test
suite. and get the results for 10 plies, then for 11, then for 12, and
you'll see that the results improve with depth. And not making one of
those correct moves is a blunder. I don't buy the "tactical sufficiency"
idea at all. I agree that 1 more ply doesn't gain a whole lot. But two
is better, and 4-5 is much better tactically.

: Would Kasparov be able to win this position against Deep Blue ?

: I think the Deep Blue team must be working harder on their software
: rather than their hardware...

I don't think they've worked on the "hardware" since last match. The chip
was "done". But the hardware processor does have a "firmware" sort of evaluation,
and the SP's search code is written in C, so I'd suspect that all they've been
doing (all? seems to make the work sound trivial, but it is far from that) is
tuning the eval and working on the search extension code, and tuning the parallel
search better.

[Moritz Berger]

On 20 Mar 1997 14:21:21 GMT, hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt)
wrote:
(posted and mailed)

>I also need to find out from Moritz what kind of book he sent to ed, and
>whether or not it had the "learn.dat" imported into it.

On the 2nd CD, I built a book with Crafty 11.17 under DOS. Since I
took it from my Crafty directory, I guess that it had the latest
learn.dat included, of course the most recent learn.dat should be
imported before starting the next game ...

> The book selection
>algorithm depends heavily on the learned results. If there are none, then
>it will play lots of bad openings until it learns what is what. a result
>of 4-0 is unexpected, but not improbable.

There are still many lemons in the huge Crafty book which show up
against opponents it didn't play previously on ICC (such as recent
beta versions of some other programs/books).

> It will be more interesting if it
>ends up 20-0. I have (so far) played 4 40/120 games with rebel 8 here on
>equal hardware (P6/200) and the result was 1 win for Crafty, one draw, and
>2 losses. They are difficult to play in manual mode of course...

I think that Crafty should be able to score 35% against Rebel, which
is nothing like a 20-0 result (indicating a 400+ ELO difference ...).

-------------
Moritz...@msn.com

[Andrew John Walker]

Congratulations, the match web site just passed 100000 visits!
Watching that one tick over was rivetting :-)

--
* Andrew Walker *
* Department Of Physics * e-mail -- aj...@uow.edu.au
* Wollongong University *
* Australia *

[brucemo]

Robert Hyatt wrote:

> I have fixed a couple of bugs that have caused a few problems in game 1, and will
> have an executable ready for when game 2 begins.

You might want to go with asymmetrical king safety, too. Better to play in the
center and out-search your opponent than it is to allow a lot of king-side
counterplay potentially.

bruce

[Patrick Jagstaidt]

Robert Hyatt wrote:
[stuff skipped]

> I have fixed a couple of bugs that have caused a few problems in game 1, and will
> have an executable ready for when game 2 begins.

[more stuff skipped]

If you allow for bug fixes between games the whole match becomes a
moving target. It was already difficult to discriminate what was due to

1. Time odd
2. Difference in evaluation function efficacy

but now in between bug fixes are furthermore blurring the issue...

PS Is Ed allowed to enhance his program during the competition ?

If yes I assume that the version playing is not the regular (commercial)
Rebel 8 which is frozen but a sequel, maybe the "enhanced" Rebel 8 under
beta test on the server...

Best regards,
P. Jagstaidt

[Robert Hyatt]

Patrick Jagstaidt (jags...@iprolink.ch) wrote:

: Robert Hyatt wrote:
: [stuff skipped]
: > I have fixed a couple of bugs that have caused a few problems in game 1, and will
: > have an executable ready for when game 2 begins.
: [more stuff skipped]

: If you allow for bug fixes between games the whole match becomes a
: moving target. It was already difficult to discriminate what was due to

: 1. Time odd
: 2. Difference in evaluation function efficacy

: but now in between bug fixes are furthermore blurring the issue...

Without the bug fixes, it is much worse. We are working on two problems
that I'm sending ed fixes on from time to time.

1. auto232 is still not right. And I've tried various things to see if it is
a timing-related problem, which it seems to be. The latest changes didn't help.

2. a fix to the "AN" command which auto232 uses to start a new game. It was
not resetting the time control correctly (I have never tested this since xboard
kills the old crafty and starts a new one for each and every game played on a
server.) As a result, crafty was getting lost in how to time each move. This
had no effect on the long game, but was causing problems in the calibration
match.

Other than those things (plus changes to things like the annotate command
which are not used in the match anyway) this is exactly the same search engine
and evaluation as before...

: PS Is Ed allowed to enhance his program during the competition ?

doesn't bother me, although I don't think he has, because he is using Rebel
8. The only change we made to crafty that effected the game was that some
where around move 12 or so, Ed used the "name rebel" command which disables
part of the asymmetric evaluation stuff, and also turns off a critical piece
of code related to timing. Crafty watches how quickly the opponent moves, and
if he moves much faster than crafty is, then it assumes the human is trying to
"flag" it and speeds up. In a handicap match, this can't be done or it will
soon be playing at the same speed as rebel, which would defeat the purpose of
the test...

All of the remainder of the games will be played like this...

Crafty will behave slightly differently, because crafty usse the time control
information to adjust some things internally. For example, the draw score. With
the old time control broken, the draw score was probably "out to lunch" somewhat,
which would make repetitions vary in value from move to move. This won't happen
now, since the time control is (hopefully) staying correct. Again, this has
not affected the NPS game since it is still in game 1... but it will/did affect
the calibration match...

: If yes I assume that the version playing is not the regular (commercial)

[Ed Schroder]

From: Patrick Jagstaidt <jags...@iprolink.ch>

: Robert Hyatt wrote:
: [stuff skipped]
: > I have fixed a couple of bugs that have caused a few problems in
: game 1, and will have an executable ready for when game 2 begins.
: [more stuff skipped]

: If you allow for bug fixes between games the whole match becomes a
: moving target. It was already difficult to discriminate what was due to

: 1. Time odd
: 2. Difference in evaluation function efficacy

: but now in between bug fixes are furthermore blurring the issue...

: PS Is Ed allowed to enhance his program during the competition ?

: If yes I assume that the version playing is not the regular (commercial)

: Rebel 8 which is frozen but a sequel, maybe the "enhanced" Rebel 8 under
: beta test on the server...

Bob's bugfix is only meant to solve some AUTO232 problems Crafty is
facing, also Bob implemented a display function so that I can watch
Crafty's time control better and report to Bob in case of problems.

Bob hasn't changed the chess engine.

Also the normal commercial version of Rebel8 is playing. In this way
everbody who owns Rebel8 can check the game. Since Crafty is free
everbody can check the Crafty moves.

Today I already made a second update of the game on my home page. Crafty
has only 6 hours left to the time control and therefore has to move
fast. The game seems to be moving in an ending with material advantage
for Rebel8.

Contents can be found at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~rebchess/match.htm

- Ed Schroder -

: Best regards,
: P. Jagstaidt

[Len]

The position after 37. Bc5 is really interesting. After Nxc5 Rxd6,
Crafty cannot recapture the rook because of the mate threat (Qa8). Very
nice. Did Crafty see that it would loose the exchange before it entered
into this line? Did Rebel8 see it?

Anyway, after the forced queen trade, I don't think Crafty will have
enough material left to draw. Crafty can create some threats by pushing
the e and a pawns, but I don't think it’s enough.

Len

[Rolf Tueschen]

Does Bob Hyatt give up game one??
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>Ed Schroder (rebc...@xs4all.nl) wrote:

>: One thing game-1 already proves...
>: In this game Crafty thinks average 4 plies deeper than Rebel due to the
>: 100 x time advantage. Still Crafty is in deep trouble. Bob said Rebel's
>: evaluation function is better than Crafty's evaluation function. I agree
>: with Bob for game-1. Game2-10 will tell us more.

>: Coming to my point: Doesn't game-1 already prove that an evaluation

>: function is (can be) worth many many plies?

>Yes... and don't forget that I've never said otherwise. If you look at my

>original statement "two equivalent programs... a 3-4-5 ply search advantage
>by one is *very* significant."

>The thing I see, which was a minor irritant in 11.17, is that due to a change
>I made, the evaluation for passed pawns went somewhat higher than I planned.

May I dare to remember that we did bet for a match between two well defined
prgs?? For me it sounds as if BH now tried to tune his machine after each
ply/fault to match the dangerous Rebel. Not known before.
Note that I don't object the ameliorating process at all. BH should do that,
but he shouldn't enter after each game done a new version into the ring.
Opinions about that?

> If
>you look at each of the moves Crafty has made so far, they all revolve around the
>passed e pawn. At nearly every move, as it searches deeper than Rebel by a big
>margin, it's found a way to hold that pawn, even if it means giving up something
>somewhere else. And it continued to do that until it was too late to save it,

Bob, we fell with you, understood. But please try to be a fair sportsman. And
look ahead of this single problem of your passed pawn. Next time it will be
another of the many possible attractive goals ...

From a scientifical point you could forfait the match at this moment. We've
already seen that you must tune a lot to meat Rebel's strong attack. I think I
was one of the first who expected this before. Because factor 100 doesn't mean
that much if the underlying strength is so weak. Sorry.
On the other hand in the sportive sense of the event your words sound like a
crying game in the edge of Joe Frazier before another rematch loss against
sting- like- a- bee-Ali. *I am the greatest.*

>I have fixed a couple of bugs that have caused a few problems in game 1,

ok.

>and will
>have an executable ready for when game 2 begins.

No, that doesn't seem correct, Bob. That would be doping.

>The main one is that if the
>game has to be re-started, Crafty won't spend 2x the normal time on the first
>move after the restart, which is a big waste here since the reason for doing this
>is to offset the fact that the trans/ref table has no useful info in it. After
>a huge search it *still* has no useful info in it. :) The next "problem" I
>found is that when game 2 starts, with Crafty using a book

You didn't read my posting that you HAD a book in game 1. Not my fault if you
left it after move 3. :)

>(I hope it seems
>to work this time) it can easily reach move 30 in book. That's going to make
>the last 10 moves in the time control take *forever*.

You can't get enough. A time factor 100 is still too less?

--

>: I am not speaking about Rebel but generally...

>: - Ed Schroder -

[Len]

Ed Schroder wrote:

[snip}

> Coming to my point: Doesn't game-1 already prove that an evaluation
> function is (can be) worth many many plies?
>

> I am not speaking about Rebel but generally...
>
> - Ed Schroder -

I have always argued (without much success) that the top programs play
better positionally than most folks here are willing to admit, and I
think this game proves my point. It shows that combinations are based on
positional advantage as much as search depth. A top program must have
the ability to bring about a position that leads to a combination.
Otherwise, it could not beat so many strong humans.

Len

[Len]

Robert Hyatt wrote:

[snip]

> In this game, Crafty happens to value passed pawns quite highly, a
> result of tuning to play against humans.

One of the key points in the game is when Rebel8 willingly allowed Crafty
to obtain a passed e pawn by playing 20. dxc3 instead of 20. Bxc3. Why
did Rebel play this move when it seems to violate several positional
rules? It creates a double c pawn, gives up a center pawn, and allows
Crafty to have a passed pawn.

I think the answer is that Rebel really understands the requirements of
the position. In a Bishop vs. Knight game, the side with the Bishop must
restrict the Knight’s mobility by taking away its support points. This
one rule is much more important than the others I previously mentioned.

After 20. dxc3, Rebel controls the important b4 and d4 squares with its
new c pawn. In fact, Rebel controls every square on the 4th rank with
its pawns with the exception of e4. As the game progresses, Crafty never
finds a good post for its Knight, while Rebel’s Bishops turn into
monsters.

Len

[Komputer Korner]

Len wrote:
>
> Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
> [snip]

>
>
>
> After 20. dxc3, Rebel controls the important b4 and d4 squares with its
> new c pawn. In fact, Rebel controls every square on the 4th rank with
> its pawns with the exception of e4. As the game progresses, Crafty never
> finds a good post for its Knight, while Rebel’s Bishops turn into
> monsters.
>
> Len

What this match is proving is that if one program is considerably
better than another, then a 3 or 4 ply handicap isn't enough. However
a 6 or 7 ply advantage which is what Deep Blue will have over the
micros would be significant. However Ed has said he needs 3 min.
per move therefore a real test would be a 1000 time handicap or
3000 minutes per move test. That unfortunately would take too long.
Therefore the debate will rage on until Deep Blue decides to play
the micros in a slow time control game.

--
Komputer Korner

The inkompetent komputer.

[brucemo]

Komputer Korner wrote:

> What this match is proving is that if one program is considerably
> better than another, then a 3 or 4 ply handicap isn't enough. However
> a 6 or 7 ply advantage which is what Deep Blue will have over the
> micros would be significant. However Ed has said he needs 3 min.
> per move therefore a real test would be a 1000 time handicap or
> 3000 minutes per move test. That unfortunately would take too long.
> Therefore the debate will rage on until Deep Blue decides to play
> the micros in a slow time control game.

With all due respect, it is not proving anything.

If a one-game match is considered proof of anything, then Spassky would
have beaten Fischer in 1972, and Deep Blue would have beaten Kasparov in
their last match.

Crafty is not a cream puff. If Crafty had a graphical interface and cost
fifty bucks, many of you would have bought it and have been satisfied.

Let us continue.

bruce

[Robert Hyatt]

Komputer Korner (kor...@netcom.ca) wrote:

: Len wrote:
: >
: > Robert Hyatt wrote:
: >
: > [snip]
: >
: >
: >
: > After 20. dxc3, Rebel controls the important b4 and d4 squares with its
: > new c pawn. In fact, Rebel controls every square on the 4th rank with
: > its pawns with the exception of e4. As the game progresses, Crafty never
: > finds a good post for its Knight, while Rebel’s Bishops turn into
: > monsters.
: >
: > Len

: What this match is proving is that if one program is considerably

: better than another, then a 3 or 4 ply handicap isn't enough. However
: a 6 or 7 ply advantage which is what Deep Blue will have over the
: micros would be significant. However Ed has said he needs 3 min.
: per move therefore a real test would be a 1000 time handicap or
: 3000 minutes per move test. That unfortunately would take too long.
: Therefore the debate will rage on until Deep Blue decides to play
: the micros in a slow time control game.

:

Way too early. if the match reaches 5-0 you might be right. It's not even
1-0 yet... And the result of the match is not the only information we get
here. Will be interesting to see what Crafty sees that Rebel doesn't, and
vice versa...

[Robert Hyatt]

Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:
: Does Bob Hyatt give up game one??

Bob Hyatt's not playing game one... :)

: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

: >Ed Schroder (rebc...@xs4all.nl) wrote:

: >: One thing game-1 already proves...
: >: In this game Crafty thinks average 4 plies deeper than Rebel due to the
: >: 100 x time advantage. Still Crafty is in deep trouble. Bob said Rebel's
: >: evaluation function is better than Crafty's evaluation function. I agree
: >: with Bob for game-1. Game2-10 will tell us more.

: >: Coming to my point: Doesn't game-1 already prove that an evaluation

: >: function is (can be) worth many many plies?

: >Yes... and don't forget that I've never said otherwise. If you look at my

: >original statement "two equivalent programs... a 3-4-5 ply search advantage
: >by one is *very* significant."

: >The thing I see, which was a minor irritant in 11.17, is that due to a change
: >I made, the evaluation for passed pawns went somewhat higher than I planned.

: May I dare to remember that we did bet for a match between two well defined
: prgs?? For me it sounds as if BH now tried to tune his machine after each
: ply/fault to match the dangerous Rebel. Not known before.
: Note that I don't object the ameliorating process at all. BH should do that,
: but he shouldn't enter after each game done a new version into the ring.
: Opinions about that?

May I dare suggest that you simply buzz the hell off? If you had followed
the discussion here, you'd certainly know that there were many changes made
to Crafty during this match. And you'd also note that *none* were to the
chess program (engine) itself. No evaluation changes. No search changes.
They were related to two, and only two issues. (1) auto232 has some strange
timing problems that I've been working on with Ed. So far, I don't know if
this is fixed or not. (2) the AN command used by auto232 to start a new game
did not work correctly in Crafty, because Crafty never sees this command in
normal playing on ICC. Ed found the problem, which simply screwed up the
time control for the 2nd-nth game, because things were not reset properly.

Now, with that explanation in plain view (again), I'd be nice if you'd either
first read about what's going on, or else ask someone that knows what's going
on, rather than putting your foot so far into your mouth that you must be
nearly choking on it. The versions Ed has been testing have been identical.
There's been no confusion. This has been stated more than once. Either sit
back and watch, or go somewhere else and do something useful. But stay *out*
of what's going on, since Ed and I are quite old enough and smart enough to
make this work like we want. If you don't like the way we are running it,
go do your own experiment. This one's ours... We don't need someone that
has no idea of what is going on, speculating about things that he knows nothing
about.

The quote above, BTW, is for 11.17, which *is* the version that has been
playing in the match. The passed pawn changes were made *before* anything
was ever sent to Ed. I'd love to scale 'em back down, but I felt that the
program had to be "constant" for the entire match. Excepting for the auto232
stuff which is making the match difficult to run, since every time a game
ends, everything has to be stopped and restarted at present to restore the
time control. Now, with all that said, please go away...

: > If

: >you look at each of the moves Crafty has made so far, they all revolve around the
: >passed e pawn. At nearly every move, as it searches deeper than Rebel by a big
: >margin, it's found a way to hold that pawn, even if it means giving up something
: >somewhere else. And it continued to do that until it was too late to save it,

: Bob, we fell with you, understood. But please try to be a fair sportsman. And
: look ahead of this single problem of your passed pawn. Next time it will be
: another of the many possible attractive goals ...

The passed pawn wasn't the only problem. The point of the above was, and still
is, that at the depth Crafty's been searching, it can pretty much do anything it
wants to. Whether what it wants to do is the right thing to do or not is another
matter, but that's evaluation. The search is doing just exactly what it is
supposed to do here... steer the game toward positions that the eval says are
better. It's done that. The eval was mistaken about the passed pawn. That
happens...

: From a scientifical point you could forfait the match at this moment. We've

: already seen that you must tune a lot to meat Rebel's strong attack. I think I
: was one of the first who expected this before. Because factor 100 doesn't mean
: that much if the underlying strength is so weak. Sorry.

I doubt you'd recognize a weak program if it snuck up and crapped in your
chair. Didn't I recall some odd thing about Stobor vs Crafty from you a while
back, where you sent me two games that crafty won, with the note that "Stobor
kills Crafty"???

I'll post some interesting analysis later, but you might be surprised at
some of what went on in this match. For example. in at least two places,
Crafty played a weaker move, simply because it saw, at depth=15, something
that it thought Rebel would play and it didn't like it. In these two cases
I know of, I've tested rebel on the position and it wouldn't have played the
move Crafty feared. So Crafty simply avoided something that would not have
happened, by playing something that was worse. It was one of the common
scenarios I've seen when two programs play and one outsearches the other by
a significant amount.

: On the other hand in the sportive sense of the event your words sound like a

: crying game in the edge of Joe Frazier before another rematch loss against
: sting- like- a- bee-Ali. *I am the greatest.*

: >I have fixed a couple of bugs that have caused a few problems in game 1,

: ok.

: >and will
: >have an executable ready for when game 2 begins.

: No, that doesn't seem correct, Bob. That would be doping.

Nope. See above. you snipped too much. The bugs were not related to playing
chess, but were *only* related to auto232..

: >The main one is that if the

: >game has to be re-started, Crafty won't spend 2x the normal time on the first
: >move after the restart, which is a big waste here since the reason for doing this
: >is to offset the fact that the trans/ref table has no useful info in it. After
: >a huge search it *still* has no useful info in it. :) The next "problem" I
: >found is that when game 2 starts, with Crafty using a book

: You didn't read my posting that you HAD a book in game 1. Not my fault if you
: left it after move 3. :)

Didn't have a book. The book had permissions set to no write access, so that
Crafty could not open it. It used the "books.bin" file, which has a few dozen
moves in it to kick crafty down the lines I think it plays best, but nothing
more. Is that hard to grasp? If so, how about 1+1=2? maybe you can cope
with that? Crafty has several thousand games that follow the b3 Sicilian
Ed played. Even Moritz was surprised as it was in his book that he sent
Ed. We all forgot about copying a CDROM file which leaves it read-only most
of the time. And crafty has to be able to write into it for the book learning.
When the open failed, it ignored the big book *completely.*

: >(I hope it seems

: >to work this time) it can easily reach move 30 in book. That's going to make
: >the last 10 moves in the time control take *forever*.

: You can't get enough. A time factor 100 is still too less?

I really don't know why I bother responding to you. I'd have more luck
talking to a street lamp. This is the way *all* chess programs I know of
work... if they play several moves out of a book, they get to use that time
when they want? Is that incorrect? If Crafty and Rebel go 30 moves in book,
won't they each have about 3x the normal time to use?

: --

: >: I am not speaking about Rebel but generally...

: >: - Ed Schroder -

: >: Rebel's chances to win this game are looking good but I think

[Jmcc28]

In article someone writes:

>: What this match is proving is that if one program is considerably
>: better than another, then a 3 or 4 ply handicap isn't enough. However
>: a 6 or 7 ply advantage which is what Deep Blue will have over the
>: micros would be significant. However Ed has said he needs 3 min.
>: per move therefore a real test would be a 1000 time handicap or
>: 3000 minutes per move test. That unfortunately would take too long.
>: Therefore the debate will rage on until Deep Blue decides to play
>: the micros in a slow time control game.

I just wanted to make a few observations here. Ok just to get this out of
the way I'm no computer programer and I'm not evern all that great at
chess but I do love chess and this is my favorite newsgroup.

From reading this newsgroup one of many big issues was how huch better
Deep Blue was than the other micros. Bob Hyatt took the position that it
was about 200 points higher and Ed thought it was only about 50 points
higher. Mr Hyatt thought Given the massive speed increase in hardware the
only way to explain how deep blue could only be a mere 50 points higher
than the the other micros would be to say that the programer was
incompetent.

Presumably the other side would take the position that IBM's programer
need not be incompetent but nonethless probably doesn't have as good of
evals as the *strongest* micros. they then would argue that this lag in
evals is more important than the increased speed than Bob Hyatt is willing
to concede (thus only a 50 point difference).

Because of the sparse evidence it seems to me both sides have a reasonable
points of view despie the clear disagreement.

Thus the test: take a program(crafty) by someone who is conceded to be at
least competent and play it against the micro that has been topping the
SSDF list (rebel8). And Give Crafty more time to compensate for the
slower hardware.

IMHO this test is helpful to determine who's understanding needs to be
revised more. Nonetheless, the ultimate question that this test was
supposed to provide evidence of is: How much better is Deep Blue than the
best micro? IMHO the following factors shoudl be considered. One factor
suggests that Deep blue woudl be stronger the other suggests that deep
blue woudl be weaker;

1) DB might be stronger than this test would indicate because it will
apparently be even faster than what these time odds represent .(see the
above quote)

but:

2) I think DB may not be as strong as this test could indicate because I
think chances are Craftys evals are probably better.
Let me explain why I think this. Crafty Is considered the *strongest*
free ware available and when you consider all of the software available it
is member of an elite bunch. Now I woudl assume IBM's programer is no
slouch but How sure are we that every piece of software he writes will be
in this elite catagory?

Furthermore (and these are more questions than comments) is it different
writing a program for deep blue than it is for every other micro in the
world? if it is, woudl it be fair to say he can't benifit from common
experiences in the programming world as much as every other software
maker? *If* it is materially different then it seems you have hundreds of
people trying to design software for one system versus one person (or
probably more precisely one team) trying to design software for another
system. Whose basket ball team are you going to bet wins the team that
has the best players from a 2,000 kid highschool or the team that only has
25 kids?

Whether Crafty put too much weight on the past pawn or not is not really
relevant. My point is that DB will undoubtedly make similar sorts of
misevaluations. And *if* what I was saying above has any truth to it DB
will probably have more than Crafty which has been played and tested by
people and computers all over the world. In short, Just because crafty
misevaluated the passed pawn doesn't mean that its programmer is
incompetent. Nobody can say exactly what it is that Deep blue will
misevaluate but given statistics the misevaluations should be there and
probably in greater numbers.
As far as crafty being programmed to beat humans I would imagine that the
DB team is also programming to beat humans and this too may put it at a
disadvantage against micros. But its still a disadvantage.
Finnally Just because I would buy a faster cpu given the chance that
doesn't mean that I think that speed of the cpu is all thatimportant *at
tournamnt time controls*. The reason I would want a fast cpu is not
because I think I will have a much better opponent for tounament time
control games. Remeber that the argument goes that once you get highter
and higher in ply there is a diminished return. Thus I would get the
faster cpubecause i don't like to wait 4 hours to get an analysis of a
game I just played. I want to get an analyis preferably in minutes.
given that the speed of the cpu has the biggest impact at these shorter
time periods I woudl want the fastest cpu so that I wouldn't need to wait
as long for good ananlysis.

Anyways the match is far from over and it is great to watch. My thanks to
both Bob Hyatt and Ed Schroeder!

Joe McCarron

[Robert Hyatt]

Jmcc28 (jmc...@aol.com) wrote:
: In article someone writes:

: but:

Pretty sure, unfortunately. I've known most of the "group" for many
years now. Murray the longest, but Hsu and company as well. There's nothing
I know of to suggest that what they are doing in DB is inferior to what I
do in Crafty. Some things are grossly different, in that they don't do any
of the risky things I do (null move, razoring, etc.) because they can *still*
reach a superior search depth without those tricks.

As far as the eval goes, DB probably does as much or more than I am doing,
from conversations with Hsu... but I'll leave the details for him to explain
when he's ready...

: Furthermore (and these are more questions than comments) is it different

: writing a program for deep blue than it is for every other micro in the
: world? if it is, woudl it be fair to say he can't benifit from common
: experiences in the programming world as much as every other software
: maker? *If* it is materially different then it seems you have hundreds of
: people trying to design software for one system versus one person (or
: probably more precisely one team) trying to design software for another
: system. Whose basket ball team are you going to bet wins the team that
: has the best players from a 2,000 kid highschool or the team that only has
: 25 kids?

It's not that different, but the parallel search is different. The main
difference is that Hsu and company have published details about what they
are doing. As have I. As has Jonathan Schaeffer. etc. Not to forget
the "mother of all chess articles" by David Slate. Everyone has used the
ideas from all of the above, but there is one particular group that is
noticably silent when it's time for the information to flow the other way.

*noticably* silent...

: Whether Crafty put too much weight on the past pawn or not is not really

[mclane]

brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote:

>Komputer Korner wrote:

>> What this match is proving is that if one program is considerably
>> better than another, then a 3 or 4 ply handicap isn't enough. However
>> a 6 or 7 ply advantage which is what Deep Blue will have over the
>> micros would be significant. However Ed has said he needs 3 min.
>> per move therefore a real test would be a 1000 time handicap or
>> 3000 minutes per move test. That unfortunately would take too long.
>> Therefore the debate will rage on until Deep Blue decides to play
>> the micros in a slow time control game.

>With all due respect, it is not proving anything.

>If a one-game match is considered proof of anything, then Spassky would
>have beaten Fischer in 1972, and Deep Blue would have beaten Kasparov in
>their last match.

>Crafty is not a cream puff. If Crafty had a graphical interface and cost
>fifty bucks, many of you would have bought it and have been satisfied.

>Let us continue.

>bruce
Why do you always get offended by someones post, you don't have to
defend Crafty. Of course we like it, and we would even buy it having
no I/O-interface, maybe not for 50$ but for shareware-prices. But
please try to calm down more. In europe having different opinion and
TELLING this opinion to another person does not include that you
a) have something against this person
b) you hate him
c) you want to destroy or kill him
d) you don't like him.

Different opinon means only different opinon. I often have the feeling
that you always take anything that is said here to personal.

Maybe you will now call this an attack. It isn't. I thought you are a
nice guy, since I met you the first time in Paderborn. Although you
maybe always thought I have something against YOU. Whatever.

Back to the topic: Of course a few samples are not that much an
evidence for anything. BUT WE STUDY NOT ONLY THE GAMES and see the
end-result, we also study the evaluations and the main-lines. And this
IS OF COURSE the main information that helps us to qualify these
quantity of events (each game one event with many subevents [the moves
in each position]) .

If you ONLY look for the results of an experiment with 5 events, than
it would be say nothing. But if you also look for each subenevent
(each position) that you have in 5 games maybe 250 events. That is a
number of events that says much, and that we have much time to study
the evaluations of the programs is also one main goal that helps to
us.

I mean, that is how I test chess-programs. I look the games, study the
main-lines. Try out and set-up positions and after I have an idea I
try to prove my suspicions with autoplayer-results or special-created
(artificial) positions.

[brucemo]

Robert Hyatt wrote:

> I doubt you'd recognize a weak program if it snuck up and crapped in your
> chair. Didn't I recall some odd thing about Stobor vs Crafty from you a while
> back, where you sent me two games that crafty won, with the note that "Stobor
> kills Crafty"???

Oh god no. That was Thorsten, not Tueschen. Let's not go down that road again.

bruce

[Robert Hyatt]

brucemo (bru...@nwlink.com) wrote:
: Robert Hyatt wrote:

: > I doubt you'd recognize a weak program if it snuck up and crapped in your

: > chair. Didn't I recall some odd thing about Stobor vs Crafty from you a while
: > back, where you sent me two games that crafty won, with the note that "Stobor
: > kills Crafty"???

: Oh god no. That was Thorsten, not Tueschen. Let's not go down that road again.

: bruce

My mistake. and I stand corrected. Difficult to tell them apart at times,
at other times it is easy. My appologies...

[Enrique Irazoqui]

brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> escribió en artículo
<333731...@nwlink.com>...

> Komputer Korner wrote:
>
> > What this match is proving is that if one program is considerably
> > better than another, then a 3 or 4 ply handicap isn't enough. However
> > a 6 or 7 ply advantage which is what Deep Blue will have over the
> > micros would be significant. However Ed has said he needs 3 min.
> > per move therefore a real test would be a 1000 time handicap or
> > 3000 minutes per move test. That unfortunately would take too long.
> > Therefore the debate will rage on until Deep Blue decides to play
> > the micros in a slow time control game.
>
> With all due respect, it is not proving anything.
>
> If a one-game match is considered proof of anything, then Spassky would
> have beaten Fischer in 1972, and Deep Blue would have beaten Kasparov in
> their last match.

They didn't play at 100:1, you shouldn't forget this. It's as if Genius 5,
as far as I know the best at blitz, would beat Rebel 8 at 100:1. Say, G5 at
2 seconds and R8 at 200 seconds/move. I'm quite sure that in a 10 games
match Genius 5 couldn't win one single game. Rebel 8 did win at 100:1. It
must mean something. Better evaluations to begin with. And in this
particular game the better evals were more important than a 4 ply deeper
search. Only one game, I know, but a very significant game.

> Crafty is not a cream puff. If Crafty had a graphical interface and cost

> fifty bucks, many of you would have bought it and have been satisfied.

With all due respect, this is not proving anything.

Enrique

> Let us continue.
>
> bruce
>

[Douglas Crowe]

On 22 Mar 1997 07:26:28 GMT, TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de
(Rolf Tueschen) wrote:

>Does Bob Hyatt give up game one??

>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:
>
>>Ed Schroder (rebc...@xs4all.nl) wrote:
>
>>: One thing game-1 already proves...
>>: In this game Crafty thinks average 4 plies deeper than Rebel due to the
>>: 100 x time advantage. Still Crafty is in deep trouble. Bob said Rebel's
>>: evaluation function is better than Crafty's evaluation function. I agree
>>: with Bob for game-1. Game2-10 will tell us more.
>
>>: Coming to my point: Doesn't game-1 already prove that an evaluation
>>: function is (can be) worth many many plies?
>
>>Yes... and don't forget that I've never said otherwise. If you look at my
>>original statement "two equivalent programs... a 3-4-5 ply search advantage
>>by one is *very* significant."
>
>>The thing I see, which was a minor irritant in 11.17, is that due to a change
>>I made, the evaluation for passed pawns went somewhat higher than I planned.
>
>May I dare to remember that we did bet for a match between two well defined
>prgs?? For me it sounds as if BH now tried to tune his machine after each
>ply/fault to match the dangerous Rebel. Not known before.
>Note that I don't object the ameliorating process at all. BH should do that,
>but he shouldn't enter after each game done a new version into the ring.
>Opinions about that?
>

>> If
>>you look at each of the moves Crafty has made so far, they all revolve around the
>>passed e pawn. At nearly every move, as it searches deeper than Rebel by a big
>>margin, it's found a way to hold that pawn, even if it means giving up something
>>somewhere else. And it continued to do that until it was too late to save it,
>
>Bob, we fell with you, understood. But please try to be a fair sportsman. And
>look ahead of this single problem of your passed pawn. Next time it will be
>another of the many possible attractive goals ...
>

>From a scientifical point you could forfait the match at this moment. We've
>already seen that you must tune a lot to meat Rebel's strong attack. I think I
>was one of the first who expected this before. Because factor 100 doesn't mean
>that much if the underlying strength is so weak. Sorry.

>On the other hand in the sportive sense of the event your words sound like a
>crying game in the edge of Joe Frazier before another rematch loss against
>sting- like- a- bee-Ali. *I am the greatest.*
>
>>I have fixed a couple of bugs that have caused a few problems in game 1,
>
>ok.
>
>>and will
>>have an executable ready for when game 2 begins.
>
>No, that doesn't seem correct, Bob. That would be doping.
>

>>The main one is that if the
>>game has to be re-started, Crafty won't spend 2x the normal time on the first
>>move after the restart, which is a big waste here since the reason for doing this
>>is to offset the fact that the trans/ref table has no useful info in it. After
>>a huge search it *still* has no useful info in it. :) The next "problem" I
>>found is that when game 2 starts, with Crafty using a book
>
>You didn't read my posting that you HAD a book in game 1. Not my fault if you
>left it after move 3. :)
>

>>(I hope it seems
>>to work this time) it can easily reach move 30 in book. That's going to make
>>the last 10 moves in the time control take *forever*.
>
>You can't get enough. A time factor 100 is still too less?
>

>--
>
>>: I am not speaking about Rebel but generally...
>
>>: - Ed Schroder -
>
>>: Rebel's chances to win this game are looking good but I think
>>: Crafty can hold the king attack and perhaps force an ending with one
>>: (or two?) pawns down. Game-1 is certainly not over yet.
>
>
>
>

Excuse me for interupting,but is there a place where this
game between Crafty and Rebel can be followed,or is it
just updated here in the group?Thanks in advance.

Douglas Crowe

[jmc...@aol.com]

In article someone writes:

>: What this match is proving is that if one program is considerably

>: better than another, then a 3 or 4 ply handicap isn't enough. However
>: a 6 or 7 ply advantage which is what Deep Blue will have over the
>: micros would be significant. However Ed has said he needs 3 min.
>: per move therefore a real test would be a 1000 time handicap or
>: 3000 minutes per move test. That unfortunately would take too long.
>: Therefore the debate will rage on until Deep Blue decides to play
>: the micros in a slow time control game.

I just wanted to make a few observations here. Ok just to get this out of the way I'm no computer programer and I'm not evern all that great at chess but I do love chess and this is my favorite newsgroup.

From reading this newsgroup one of many big issues was how huch better Deep Blue was than the other micros. Bob Hyatt took the position that it was about 200 points higher and Ed thought it was only about 50 points higher. Mr Hyatt thought Given the massive speed increase in hardware the only way to explain how deep blue could only be a mere 50 points higher than the the other micros would be to say that the programer was incompetent.

Presumably the other side would take the position that IBM's programer need not be incompetent but nonethless probably doesn't have as good of evals as the *strongest* micros. they then would argue that this lag in evals is more important than the increased speed than Bob Hyatt is willing to concede (thus only a 50 point difference).

Because of the sparse evidence it seems to me both sides have a reasonable points of view despie the clear disagreement.

Thus the test: take a program(crafty) by someone who is conceded to be at least competent and play it against the micro that has been topping the SSDF list (rebel8). And Give Crafty more time to compensate for the slower hardware.

IMHO this test is helpful to determine who's understanding needs to be revised more. Nonetheless, the ultimate question that this test was supposed to provide evidence of is: How much better is Deep Blue than the best micro? IMHO the following factors shoudl be considered. One factor suggests that Deep blue woudl be stronger the other suggests that deep blue woudl be weaker;

1) DB might be stronger than this test would indicate because it will apparently be even faster than what these time odds represent .(see the above quote)

but:

2) I think DB may not be as strong as this test could indicate because I think chances are Craftys evals are probably better.
Let me explain why I think this. Crafty Is considered the *strongest* free ware available and when you consider all of the software available it is member of an elite bunch. Now I woudl assume IBM's programer is no slouch but How sure are we that every piece of software he writes will be in this elite catagory?

Furthermore (and these are more questions than comments) is it different writing a program for deep blue than it is for every other micro in the world? if it is, woudl it be fair to say he can't benifit from common experiences in the programming world as much as every other software maker? *If* it is materially different then it seems you have hundreds of people trying to design software for one system versus one person (or probably more precisely one team) trying to design software for another system. Whose basket ball team are you going to bet wins the team that has the best players from a 2,000 kid highschool or the team that only has 25 kids?

Whether Crafty put too much weight on the past pawn or not is not really relevant. My point is that DB will undoubtedly make similar sorts of misevaluations. And *if* what I was saying above has any truth to it DB will probably have more than Crafty which has been played and tested by people and computers all over the world. In short, Just because crafty misevaluated the passed pawn doesn't mean that its programmer is incompetent. Nobody can say exactly what it is that Deep blue will misevaluate but given statistics the misevaluations should be there and probably in greater numbers.

[Komputer Korner]

Douglas Crowe wrote

> >
> >
> >
> >
> Excuse me for interupting,but is there a place where this
> game between Crafty and Rebel can be followed,or is it
> just updated here in the group?Thanks in advance.
>
> Douglas Crowe

http://www.xs4all.nl/~rebchess/

[Christopher R. Dorr]

Rolf Tueschen <TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de> wrote in article
<5h01j4$1...@news00.btx.dtag.de>...

> Does Bob Hyatt give up game one??
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>

> From a scientifical point you could forfait the match at this moment.
We've
> already seen that you must tune a lot to meat Rebel's strong attack. I
think I
> was one of the first who expected this before. Because factor 100 doesn't
mean
> that much if the underlying strength is so weak. Sorry.
> On the other hand in the sportive sense of the event your words sound
like a
> crying game in the edge of Joe Frazier before another rematch loss
against
> sting- like- a- bee-Ali. *I am the greatest.*
>

Forfeit the match after one game? That's absurd. One game proves exactly
nothing. It may be suggestive of something, but if you feel that this
proves something one way or the other, I can recommend a number of good
*introductory* books on statistics.

Crafty is anything but weak. There is tremendous evidence to support this.
FICS, ICC, the equal time match vs. Rebel, etc...

Also, I'd suggest you check your dictionary, and compare the meaning of
'excuse' versus 'explanation'.

I've never seen Bob making excuses for anything. He's here (as many, but
apparently not all, of us are) to explore ideas in computer chess. He WROTE
Crafty, so it logically follows that he might have some good ideas (perhaps
better than yours?) about what is going on. If this match is going to have
any meaning, it has to include some insight given by those who have a deep
understanding of what is happening, as well as a raw score result.

He has said numerous times that he is not tuning the engine AT ALL. He is
attempting to rectify problems with the autoplay interface.

Why are these things so hard to understand?

Chris

[mclane]

brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote:

>Robert Hyatt wrote:

>> I doubt you'd recognize a weak program if it snuck up and crapped in your
>> chair. Didn't I recall some odd thing about Stobor vs Crafty from you a while
>> back, where you sent me two games that crafty won, with the note that "Stobor
>> kills Crafty"???

Where I have sent 2 games where CRAFTY won, with the note that Stobor
kills crafty ??!

I think this cannot be true either. Tom had a version (I still have
the executable) that is really strong and will/would kill crafty.
There is no doubt about this fact.

I don't understand why now crafty killed stobor. I though it was vice
versa.

>Oh god no. That was Thorsten, not Tueschen. Let's not go down that road again.

>bruce

Do you really believe that I would have posted stobor kills crafty if
I would not be sure about this ?!
I have both programs, I have machines to find it out.
Nothing is easier. You don't need 100 or 200 games to show evidence.
If you have eyes to see and feelings a small sample says more to you
than any autoplayer can find out in 50 or more games.

I don't understand why you have problems to believe that feelings can
replace statistic perfectly. Don't you love your wife although never
any evidence and statistic was made about your love ?!

BTW: The poster was mclane !

[Robert Hyatt]

mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
: brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote:

: >Robert Hyatt wrote:

: >> I doubt you'd recognize a weak program if it snuck up and crapped in your

: >> chair. Didn't I recall some odd thing about Stobor vs Crafty from you a while
: >> back, where you sent me two games that crafty won, with the note that "Stobor
: >> kills Crafty"???

: Where I have sent 2 games where CRAFTY won, with the note that Stobor
: kills crafty ??!

: I think this cannot be true either. Tom had a version (I still have
: the executable) that is really strong and will/would kill crafty.
: There is no doubt about this fact.

There's lots of doubt, Crafty's played stobor many times on both ICC and
Chess.net... log on to ICC and "search +=crafty -=ratbert" and then
"search -=crafty +=ratbert"

The first command produces 65 wins for crafty... the second produces 10
losses for crafty...

As the saying goes,

Q.E.D.

: I don't understand why now crafty killed stobor. I though it was vice
: versa.

you sent me 3 games. the first, "stobor kills crafty, *but* stobor made
a mistake in the endgame and lost." the second "stobor kills crafty, *but*
stobor didn't realize that it had to stop the a-pawn from advancing and it
lost." the third "stobor kills crafty, but crafty was lucky and found a
repetition draw."

Those were what I was talking about. It sounds like the old elementary
school conversation, where a kid comes home with a black eye, blood all
over his shirt. His dad asked "did you get into a fight?" The kid
responds, eyes down, "yes.". Dad says "how'd you do?" Kid responds,
"I beat the hell out of his fist with my face." :)

: >Oh god no. That was Thorsten, not Tueschen. Let's not go down that road again.

: >bruce

: Do you really believe that I would have posted stobor kills crafty if
: I would not be sure about this ?!
: I have both programs, I have machines to find it out.
: Nothing is easier. You don't need 100 or 200 games to show evidence.
: If you have eyes to see and feelings a small sample says more to you
: than any autoplayer can find out in 50 or more games.

Exactly. I have enough evidence to convince myself.

: I don't understand why you have problems to believe that feelings can

: replace statistic perfectly. Don't you love your wife although never
: any evidence and statistic was made about your love ?!

: BTW: The poster was mclane !

I corrected it and appologized after Bruce pointed out the error. :)

[mclane]

"Christopher R. Dorr" <crd...@cinternet.net> wrote:

>Rolf Tueschen <TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de> wrote in article
><5h01j4$1...@news00.btx.dtag.de>...
>> Does Bob Hyatt give up game one??
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>
>> From a scientifical point you could forfait the match at this moment.
>We've
>> already seen that you must tune a lot to meat Rebel's strong attack. I
>think I
>> was one of the first who expected this before. Because factor 100 doesn't
>mean
>> that much if the underlying strength is so weak. Sorry.
>> On the other hand in the sportive sense of the event your words sound
>like a
>> crying game in the edge of Joe Frazier before another rematch loss
>against
>> sting- like- a- bee-Ali. *I am the greatest.*
>>

>Forfeit the match after one game? That's absurd. One game proves exactly
>nothing. It may be suggestive of something, but if you feel that this
>proves something one way or the other, I can recommend a number of good
>*introductory* books on statistics.

Statistic proves nothing ! A chess program consists of positions. Each
position can be evaluated. The programs give an evaluation, and they
search. Looking on each evaluation and on each main line gives you (in
a normal game of 50 moves) 100 events where you can SEE and this way
proof if a program plays good chess or not.

Of course - if you only look for the result in the end of the game,
you need more events. But why should we do this ?
I mean, we have eyes to see and the programs have INFORMATION-windows
to show us. Why should we close our eyes, wait 50 moves without doing
anything, take out a book about statistics in the end, and raise on
finger in the air and say: I have found out as a statistician that
this single result proves NOTHING.

I mean: what are your guys doing there ?! If chess is only the result
at the end of the game, why the bloody hell do so many people follow
chess-games and study analysis and thousands of books are written
about if just the result at the end of the game is that important.

No - statistic may be nice, but only fools make 1 event out of 100 !
These fools are called : statisticians !

I give back your own words:

[Robert Hyatt]

Christopher R. Dorr (crd...@cinternet.net) wrote:

: Rolf Tueschen <TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de> wrote in article
: <5h01j4$1...@news00.btx.dtag.de>...
: > Does Bob Hyatt give up game one??
: > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: >
: > From a scientifical point you could forfait the match at this moment.
: We've
: > already seen that you must tune a lot to meat Rebel's strong attack. I
: think I
: > was one of the first who expected this before. Because factor 100 doesn't
: mean
: > that much if the underlying strength is so weak. Sorry.
: > On the other hand in the sportive sense of the event your words sound
: like a
: > crying game in the edge of Joe Frazier before another rematch loss
: against
: > sting- like- a- bee-Ali. *I am the greatest.*
: >

: Forfeit the match after one game? That's absurd. One game proves exactly
: nothing. It may be suggestive of something, but if you feel that this
: proves something one way or the other, I can recommend a number of good
: *introductory* books on statistics.

: Crafty is anything but weak. There is tremendous evidence to support this.

: FICS, ICC, the equal time match vs. Rebel, etc...

: Also, I'd suggest you check your dictionary, and compare the meaning of
: 'excuse' versus 'explanation'.

: I've never seen Bob making excuses for anything. He's here (as many, but
: apparently not all, of us are) to explore ideas in computer chess. He WROTE
: Crafty, so it logically follows that he might have some good ideas (perhaps
: better than yours?) about what is going on. If this match is going to have
: any meaning, it has to include some insight given by those who have a deep
: understanding of what is happening, as well as a raw score result.

: He has said numerous times that he is not tuning the engine AT ALL. He is
: attempting to rectify problems with the autoplay interface.

: Why are these things so hard to understand?

: Chris

While I always appreciate "kind words" since they are pretty rare here, I'd like to
suggest that everyone take a few deep breaths here. This isn't the end of the world.
For those that are interested in this issue, we'll find a way to answer the question
one way or another. For those that want to know how crafty will do "heads up" with
Rebel on equal hardware, the SSDF will eventually answer that whether I like the
answer or not.

Here's a brief description of what went wrong in the match:

1. The AN command is used by auto232 to start a new game. On the servers, xboard/
winboard simply kills the old crafty process and starts a new one after each game.
Auto232 tells crafty to reset and start again. I improperly reset the time control
information, which caused two problems, one of which Ed caught and reported to me.

(a) crafty used bogus time control stuff after the first game in the calibration
match. In some games, it took too long. In others it moved quicker than it
should have. None of this was Ed's fault, it was an error in my code that had
been undetected for well over a year because this code is not used the way I
run crafty on servers.

(b) Crafty also used a bogus time control for the opponent, and this did have some
impact on the game. After the first game, it thought the opponent had zero
time left. If you've watched crafty play on ICC, you've noticed that draw
scores range from 0.000 all the way down to -1.000, depending on the stage
of the game (in part) but more importantly, depending on how much time the
opponent has left on the clock. The problem is, of course, that if Rebel
thought it was slightly worse, it could try to repeat a position to make crafty
move elsewhere. Crafty would try to avoid the repetition, because it would appear
that the repetition was losing a pawn (-1.000 for the evaluation). And the result
is that rather than take a draw, Crafty would likely take a loss, because by the time
the eval got to -1, Rebel would have decided it didn't want the draw after all. :)
This was my error. When I looked at the logs, it became obvious what I'd done. I
never thought the match should be re-started, because if we restart every time I find
a bug, it might never end. :) That was my decision, not Ed's.

(c) in the NPS game, crafty played without an opening book. It appears that when the book
was copied in from CDROM, the permissions were wrong, Crafty couldn't write to it (which
book learning requires) and so it ignored it. The position after move 12 or so looked
perfectly solid to me, and from the point where this occurred, I've always maintained that
not having a book should not have been an issue here. 15 plies is enough to find decent
opening moves as the game shows. So the book might have helped, because the position
would clearly have been different since crafty doesn't play g6 in Sicilian defenses as
black. But also, just as clearly, Crafty got itself into whatever it got into, all by
itself. I thought the game was valid, and never said otherwise.

(d) numerous auto232 bugs were preventing the calibration match from running smoothly. There
are some rediculous timing considerations necessary to make this work right. Crafty can't
wait too long to echo the move the opponent made. It can't echo the move too quickly
either. It has to be "just right" which is not easy since I don't have the facility to
test the auto232 stuff here. This was resulting in many games not getting completed
due to auto232 getting ticked and hanging.

I made one change to fix (a) and (b) above as soon as we found it. I made many changes to
try to solve (d). The engine nor eval were changed at all, although to be technical, the eval
was changed by (b) since it quit seeing bad draw scores after the fix. I left the bogus passed
pawn values alone, even though I'd have loved to change them.

I was less interested in how Crafty did positionally against Rebel than I was/am about how
it would do tactically with the extra search depth. That's still the point I'd like to resolve,
as it's an interesting point for discussion...

With that said, every problem above was mine. If Ed "had enough" that's certainly his
choice to make. It was taking time, the email was flowing in a large volume daily as Bruce
mentioned. I felt/feel bad about the problems, but don't know what I could have done to make
this go any smoother. Difficult to write code for an interface that is *very* touchy, particularly
when I don't have the thing to test it...

[Torstein Hall]

mclane <mcl...@prima.ruhr.de> skrev i artikkelen
<E7pKz...@news.prima.ruhr.de>...

> "Christopher R. Dorr" <crd...@cinternet.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> >Rolf Tueschen <TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de> wrote in
article
> ><5h01j4$1...@news00.btx.dtag.de>...
> >> Does Bob Hyatt give up game one??
> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >>
> >> From a scientifical point you could forfait the match at this moment.
> >We've
> >> already seen that you must tune a lot to meat Rebel's strong attack. I
> >think I
> >> was one of the first who expected this before. Because factor 100
doesn't
> >mean
> >> that much if the underlying strength is so weak. Sorry.
> >> On the other hand in the sportive sense of the event your words sound
> >like a
> >> crying game in the edge of Joe Frazier before another rematch loss
> >against
> >> sting- like- a- bee-Ali. *I am the greatest.*
> >>
>
> >Forfeit the match after one game? That's absurd. One game proves exactly
> >nothing. It may be suggestive of something, but if you feel that this
> >proves something one way or the other, I can recommend a number of good
> >*introductory* books on statistics.
>

> Statistic proves nothing ! A chess program consists of positions. Each
> position can be evaluated. The programs give an evaluation, and they
> search. Looking on each evaluation and on each main line gives you (in
> a normal game of 50 moves) 100 events where you can SEE and this way
> proof if a program plays good chess or not.

Why are you always wrong? :)

Statistics prove a lot, within certain limits.
Since chess consists out a very big number of positions, its impractical to
test them all! You rather play some games, study the eval of the programs,
and the results of the game and make your conclusion about most of the
positions.
Then you say with that one program is stronger than the other, within your
margin of error. If you can calculate how big the probability of you beeing
right or wrong is, then its statistics!

> Of course - if you only look for the result in the end of the game,
> you need more events. But why should we do this ?
> I mean, we have eyes to see and the programs have INFORMATION-windows
> to show us. Why should we close our eyes, wait 50 moves without doing
> anything, take out a book about statistics in the end, and raise on
> finger in the air and say: I have found out as a statistician that
> this single result proves NOTHING.
>
> I mean: what are your guys doing there ?! If chess is only the result
> at the end of the game, why the bloody hell do so many people follow
> chess-games and study analysis and thousands of books are written
> about if just the result at the end of the game is that important.
>
>
> No - statistic may be nice, but only fools make 1 event out of 100 !
> These fools are called : statisticians !
>
> I give back your own words:

> >Why are these things so hard to understand?
>
> >Chris
>
>
>

--
Torstein Hall
tors...@eunet.no
http://login.eunet.no/torshall/

[Rolf Tueschen]

"Christopher R. Dorr" <crd...@cinternet.net> wrote:

>Rolf Tueschen <TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de> wrote in article
><5h01j4$1...@news00.btx.dtag.de>...
>> Does Bob Hyatt give up game one??
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>
>> From a scientifical point you could forfait the match at this moment.

Note, I wrote this long before Ed Schroder wrote about his emotions when he
read Bob's comments about whats all about in game one. See this in the other
thread. Ed also felt his point already been proven.

>>We've
>> already seen that you must tune a lot to meat Rebel's strong attack. I
>think I
>> was one of the first who expected this before. Because factor 100 doesn't
>mean
>> that much if the underlying strength is so weak. Sorry.
>> On the other hand in the sportive sense of the event your words sound
>like a
>> crying game in the edge of Joe Frazier before another rematch loss
>against
>> sting- like- a- bee-Ali. *I am the greatest.*
>>

>Forfeit the match after one game? That's absurd.

I don't think so.

>One game proves exactly
>nothing.

Pretending with *exactly* a final scientifical result you were caught by sort
of wishful thinking, no?

>It may be suggestive of something, but if you feel that this
>proves something one way or the other, I can recommend a number of good
>*introductory* books on statistics.

Ok. None would build statistically relevance on one single game. I always
opposed this and was informed by a certain SSDF expert that single matches of
three or maybe 1 game wouldn't hurt the overall statistical result -- but I
never bought this, because for me it was putting apples and beans together ...

BUT in this case of resulting game between Crafty factor 100 (!) and Rebel game
one already showed a lot concerning chess content. Or did you believe before
the start that Rebel would set a classical knocker to mute krafti which always
*looked deeper for 3 or four plies*???

Crafty failed to understand a lot of things in this game. I'm not in the
position to explain all of them. I'm a too weak chess player. But without
having read master analysis about the game I'll try as follows:

Crafty was lost with a weak f-file. And a weak f7. Then Rebel decided to change
play from pure mating threatening to the point d5. With the B on c4 seeing at
e6--f7. The rook on f1 --- f7. The Q on f3 against d5 and f7. Then crafty
overlooked in spite of his greater depth the b5 *sac*. Right, the move before
everyone *sees* the move Bxb5, but then it's too late. The whole position is
positionally lost. Normally one had expected theat Crafty should foresee the
positions after Rebel's 33.Bd3. Remember Crafty had material equality at that
moment, but was positionally already lost!

Now the thing Bob did was to go way more backward. He even said that after 10
moves Rebel had a better / won? (I can't remember it right) position. And he
simply argued that the missing book was the source of all that ...

Look, that's what I criticised in a former post. If you argue like that you
could wipe off all the brilliancy and magical of every single won game of
Mikhail Tal for instance. You simple argue backwards having the later results
in mind. And you *show* that after this or that Tal never had the chance to sac
this or that.

If you continue for some time on this -- you'll end in writing books about 1.e4
and wins. Or 1.d4 and mate in 45 moves. Or you could say, that you end up with
playing against god if you start playing chess. It's the same with the egg and
the duck. Or what, if our parents wouldn't have had such a ball we all wouldn't
be here ....

For me at least Rebel won a nice game in a style Kasparov couldn't do better
against Deep Blue. So we had in nucleus what will happen in May. I mean, it
became quite clear that Rebel had enough chess wisdom more than Crafty to
equalize/neutralize the exhorbitant time factor 100.

Don't you agree on this?

Ok, and I'll agree that this single game didn't prove anything scientifically.
but 10 games wouldn't be enough either. I'm even not sure that this sort of
experimental setting was best to test the thesis of both sides. For me Ed's
argument was clear in advance. And the game demonstated that to omit the
following *weaknesses* Crafty had to look 20 not 2 or three moves *more* ahead
than Rebel or just nothing more depth related -- sounds illogical but seems to
hit the truth. For Rebel it was enough to play at brute force level 8/9 to
build a nice attack and afterwards a positional winning. But as far as
Kasparov's level is concerned they both would be without any chances, because
for GK all the discussed wouldn't be primarily a question of search depth but
wisdom of patterns. These are out of sight even for Deep Blue.

>Crafty is anything but weak. There is tremendous evidence to support this.
>FICS, ICC, the equal time match vs. Rebel, etc...

None said the opposite. And Bob's *foreseeing* feature is really dangerous on a
rapid game, because it reacts rather strong on the basis of deep search if
you're caught in a foreseen line. Then a computer is always better than a human
player. That's all.

>Also, I'd suggest you check your dictionary, and compare the meaning of
>'excuse' versus 'explanation'.

>I've never seen Bob making excuses for anything.

How comes? I've read it several times. :)

> He's here (as many, but
>apparently not all, of us are) to explore ideas in computer chess. He WROTE
>Crafty, so it logically follows that he might have some good ideas (perhaps
>better than yours?)

We agree 100% on that one for sure. :)

>about what is going on. If this match is going to have
>any meaning, it has to include some insight given by those who have a deep
>understanding of what is happening, as well as a raw score result.

Yes, I agree again. But I still want to differentiate the programming stuff
(here ES is the suitable side) and tthe chess stuff. And that would lead us
back to the Kasparov vs Deep Blue match. I think in repetition that this match
would be the continuation of the picture one could see in game one discussed
above.

>He has said numerous times that he is not tuning the engine AT ALL. He is
>attempting to rectify problems with the autoplay interface.

>Why are these things so hard to understand?

Because it's not true. If I had the time I could quote Bob's writing about
several versions in the next 6 months. And he surely wanted to *tune*. The
book, the passed pawn stuff and so on. You must read a bit more carefully. But
I agree Bob did never propose to enter version 11.19 or 20 for game 2 or 3. But
all the wining meant exactly the same (implications wise ...). Let me even go
further to baite Bob. He dreamed of a tuned version which had learned enough
about Rebel to master his slave thereafter. And I'm even sure that this would
be possible to implantate.
Bob, I'm not doing anything spooky. It's only exact (!) reading of your
writings. (:-))={ I don't know, but I always hit the ceiling these days.
What's this all about? I can really fly. Me thinks.

>Chris

Greetings and thanks

Rolf

P.S. Remember I gave my betting at the beginning of the game with 6 to 7 points
FOR Rebel as the winner. Maybe that was for a great joy all over this planet
..

But I did this from my experience with one special single game against a former
version of Crafty. I sent Bob the notation of the game. His main reaction was
not to be understood at the time: He wrote s.th. like the following: you must
play Crafty on a P 200 ...

And I had informed Bob about my observation that Crafty seemed to play worse
when I had played a move he didn't expect/foresee. Seems to be a principal
weakness in non-rapid games for Bob's feature. All this was discussed recently
in another thread. Could one win strength by playing mainly the limited (known)
search depth of the opponent? Seems to me that Bob did some interesting stuff.
Ok, it's mere clearvoyance again. :)

[Enrique Irazoqui]

"Christopher R. Dorr" <crd...@cinternet.net> wrote:

>Forfeit the match after one game? That's absurd. One game proves exactly
>nothing. It may be suggestive of something, but if you feel that this

>proves something one way or the other, I can recommend a number of good
>*introductory* books on statistics.

These books would tell you that a 10 games match is not much statistic
proof either. To begin with, statistics had nothing to do with this match.
Or else you would have to play 500 games. No, it had to do with how a
search handicap would affect the game, which you could analize in the game
itself. 10 games would have been better, and 1,000 games even better.
Still, statistics is by no means the only way to find out about things.

Enrique

[Kenneth Sloan]

In article <333A48...@pop1.sympatico.ca>,
Komputer Korner <b1bx...@pop1.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>Douglas Crowe wrote
>> ...

>> Excuse me for interupting,but is there a place where this
>> game between Crafty and Rebel can be followed,or is it
>> just updated here in the group?Thanks in advance.

>> ...
>
>http://www.xs4all.nl/~rebchess/

This is incorrect.
The correct URL is:http://www.xs4all.nl/~rebchess/match.htm

By the way - the information there still promises a 10-game match.

I was interested in the "calibration match" - until I downloaded the
first seven games and discovered that Rebel has played white in all
games.

Passing strange...

--
Kenneth Sloan sl...@cis.uab.edu
Computer and Information Sciences (205) 934-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham FAX (205) 934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170 http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/faculty/sloan/

[Robert Hyatt]

Kenneth Sloan (sl...@cis.uab.edu) wrote:
: In article <333A48...@pop1.sympatico.ca>,

: Komputer Korner <b1bx...@pop1.sympatico.ca> wrote:
: >Douglas Crowe wrote
: >> ...
: >> Excuse me for interupting,but is there a place where this
: >> game between Crafty and Rebel can be followed,or is it
: >> just updated here in the group?Thanks in advance.
: >> ...
: >
: >http://www.xs4all.nl/~rebchess/

: This is incorrect.
: The correct URL is:http://www.xs4all.nl/~rebchess/match.htm

: By the way - the information there still promises a 10-game match.

: I was interested in the "calibration match" - until I downloaded the
: first seven games and discovered that Rebel has played white in all
: games.

: Passing strange...

Ed explained this. the auto232 doesn't alternate colors. He has to do
it manually. So typically a match will be N with white, then N with
black, making sure that the matche ends after M*N such series, where
M is even...

Bob

[Roy Mongiovi]

What I'd like to know is why everyone seems to invest so much EGO in
this match. It maybe makes sense for Ed, since he has financial
investment in Rebel, and for Bob, since he's trying to do a good thing
by making crafty available as a breadboard for computer chess
development.

But I'll be damned if I can figure out why the rest of you jump on
everything either of them says about their programs or the match.

If the match could have shed some light on the truth of tree searching
versus evaluation function, I think that would have been a good thing.
It seems to me that one game isn't enough.

Here's my hypothesis. Tree search is necessary to find combinations.
A chess program can't play a combination shorter than its tree search,
since it doesn't plan from move to move. In the absence of such a
combination, the evaluation function has to be able to discriminate
among all the positions it examines in order to guide the search toward
the most promising continuation.

So I guess the question is what percentage of the time can an excellent
evaluation function avoid positions where there are tactics beyond its
search capability, but within the search capability of a faster
program?
--
Roy J. Mongiovi System Support Specialist IV Information Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
Tough are the souls that tread the knife's edge Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0715
Jethro Tull - "Passion Play" r...@prism.gatech.edu

[Robert Hyatt]

Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:

Never said that. Don't know where you imagined it from, but it wasn't from
me. I clearly stated that after 10-12 moves, even without the book, crafty's
position looked perfectly sound to me. With a book it would have played
differently, but that doesn't mean a thing in this context. Because it
still could have come out of any book line with the wrong idea about what
is right and wrong. Maybe, maybe not. In any case, you won't find a single
post from me saying the game was lost due to a missing book, or the game was
lost due to a poor position that the book would have avoided. I'd take the
position at move 12-15 any day, for either side. Nothing looked bad to me
at all about the position there for either side.

: Look, that's what I criticised in a former post. If you argue like that you

: could wipe off all the brilliancy and magical of every single won game of
: Mikhail Tal for instance. You simple argue backwards having the later results
: in mind. And you *show* that after this or that Tal never had the chance to sac
: this or that.

: If you continue for some time on this -- you'll end in writing books about 1.e4
: and wins. Or 1.d4 and mate in 45 moves. Or you could say, that you end up with
: playing against god if you start playing chess. It's the same with the egg and
: the duck. Or what, if our parents wouldn't have had such a ball we all wouldn't
: be here ....

: For me at least Rebel won a nice game in a style Kasparov couldn't do better
: against Deep Blue. So we had in nucleus what will happen in May. I mean, it
: became quite clear that Rebel had enough chess wisdom more than Crafty to
: equalize/neutralize the exhorbitant time factor 100.

: Don't you agree on this?

in this one game, yes. More games would be more revealing. For example,
in the Korrespondence Kup, rebel and Crafty are using equal time, and the
position is dead even. So either Crafty is lucky to be alive in the Kup
game, or Rebel was somewhat lucky to survive with a huge search handicap
in the NPS game. But there's luck somewhere. Where, we can argue about
for a long time. I plan on discovering which is right myself, with data,
not discussion...

: Ok, and I'll agree that this single game didn't prove anything scientifically.

you might well be right. remember I've predicted 4-2 again for Kasparov.
2 wins, 4 draws. Just a wild guess. If Hsu and company have tuned the
eval over the past year, this could *easily* change for the better of
DB. We'll see in a month or so...

: >He has said numerous times that he is not tuning the engine AT ALL. He is

: >attempting to rectify problems with the autoplay interface.

: >Why are these things so hard to understand?

: Because it's not true. If I had the time I could quote Bob's writing about
: several versions in the next 6 months. And he surely wanted to *tune*. The
: book, the passed pawn stuff and so on. You must read a bit more carefully. But
: I agree Bob did never propose to enter version 11.19 or 20 for game 2 or 3. But
: all the wining meant exactly the same (implications wise ...). Let me even go
: further to baite Bob. He dreamed of a tuned version which had learned enough
: about Rebel to master his slave thereafter. And I'm even sure that this would
: be possible to implantate.

Nope, not even close. there was no whining. I simply reported here what was
going on with the match, and why there were new versions every day, and what
these new versions were changing. Never changed the eval. Except of course
that fixing the timing bug effectively changed the eval quite a bit because
the gross contempt score was no longer non-zero due to a timing mistake.
Never changed the search. Only changes were to the auto232 interface, which
is still not working as it should...

: Bob, I'm not doing anything spooky. It's only exact (!) reading of your

: writings. (:-))={ I don't know, but I always hit the ceiling these days.
: What's this all about? I can really fly. Me thinks.

Then you ought to quote what you read. I talk about new versions of Crafty
here all the time. Ed and I also discussed this point at length and we
both agreed that we'd stick with the same programs throughout, other than
we each could fix problems that were unrelated to the chess code, such as
the timing problem both he and I had, as well as the auto232 problems I
had. There was never any attempt to do anything but let the two programs
play to the best of their abilities, with us taking care of any odd thing
that came up. In a real match, for example, Ed couldn't tinker with the
time per move once a game started. We both agreed he not only should be
able to do so, but that he should be required to do so, so that Rebel
would not suddenly start moving too quickly. That was *not* in the spirit
of what we wanted to show. Therefore we agreed that he could adjust the
time per move whenever he wanted, since the code that normally did this was
not being used due to the odd circumstances of the match with no thinking on
the opponent's time allowed.

You read, you misunderstand, then you misquote. I know you can do better...

: >Chris

: Greetings and thanks

: Rolf

: P.S. Remember I gave my betting at the beginning of the game with 6 to 7 points
: FOR Rebel as the winner. Maybe that was for a great joy all over this planet
: ..

: But I did this from my experience with one special single game against a former
: version of Crafty. I sent Bob the notation of the game. His main reaction was
: not to be understood at the time: He wrote s.th. like the following: you must
: play Crafty on a P 200 ...

I believe my response was "play the real crafty" on icc/chess.net. I have no
idea what version you used, what book you used, what settings you used, etc.
Doesn't take much to make it screw up badly. The one on ICC doesn't...

: And I had informed Bob about my observation that Crafty seemed to play worse

: when I had played a move he didn't expect/foresee. Seems to be a principal
: weakness in non-rapid games for Bob's feature. All this was discussed recently
: in another thread. Could one win strength by playing mainly the limited (known)
: search depth of the opponent? Seems to me that Bob did some interesting stuff.
: Ok, it's mere clearvoyance again. :)

and I don't know what this might mean. If you'd like to play a game, here on ICC,
where it is *forbidden* for you to *ever* play the move Crafty expects... I'll be
happy to oblige, and will put money on that outcome. (hint... any piece defended
only once is not defended at all should crafty take it... :) )

[Preston Briggs]

Well, I'm very disappointed to seem the match terminated.
Been enjoying the game. Indeed, about 10% of my company has
been following the game, stopping by my office every day
to check the progress.

It's too bad, after all the initial work and the time invested in the
play, to see the experiment trashed without result. Some people may
think that the first game is significant -- I disagree. I'd say the
first game was more along the lines of a shakedown run. It's
unfortunate that provisions weren't made for such a test game to
ensure that all the experimental apparatus was in place and stable.

When you do experimental work like this, you have to be prepared to
redo your experiments. Happens in lots of circumstances

you have to be able to reproduce your results

others have to be able to reproduce your results

something went wrong and you have to correct it and restart
the beginning

These things happen all the time. It's why science, especially good
science, is expensive. I can't tell you how many time I reran all the
experiments described in my thesis. Over and over and over again.
Very depressing. But in the end, the results were good (meaning well
documented and reproducible).

I encourage you guys to reconsider the experiment. It seems clear
that a lot of people are interested in the result. Indeed, even the
problems you have uncovered have been interesting in their own right.

Preston Briggs

[Enrique Irazoqui]

Roy Mongiovi <r...@prism.gatech.edu> escribió en artículo
<5hega3$4...@acmex.gatech.edu>...

> But I'll be damned if I can figure out why the rest of you jump on
> everything either of them says about their programs or the match.

For the same reason you just did. It's an interesting topic, no?

Enrique

[Komputer Korner]

Roy Mongiovi wrote:
>
> What I'd like to know is why everyone seems to invest so much EGO in
> this match. It maybe makes sense for Ed, since he has financial
> investment in Rebel, and for Bob, since he's trying to do a good thing
> by making crafty available as a breadboard for computer chess
> development.
>

> But I'll be damned if I can figure out why the rest of you jump on
> everything either of them says about their programs or the match.
>

> If the match could have shed some light on the truth of tree searching
> versus evaluation function, I think that would have been a good thing.
> It seems to me that one game isn't enough.
>
> Here's my hypothesis. Tree search is necessary to find combinations.
> A chess program can't play a combination shorter than its tree search,
> since it doesn't plan from move to move. In the absence of such a
> combination, the evaluation function has to be able to discriminate
> among all the positions it examines in order to guide the search toward
> the most promising continuation.
>
> So I guess the question is what percentage of the time can an excellent
> evaluation function avoid positions where there are tactics beyond its
> search capability, but within the search capability of a faster
> program?
> --
> Roy J. Mongiovi System Support Specialist IV Information Technology
> Georgia Institute of Technology
> Tough are the souls that tread the knife's edge Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0715
> Jethro Tull - "Passion Play" r...@prism.gatech.edu

Yup, you summed up the question quite well, but how do you vote?
Deep Searcher or Knowledge King?
--
Komputer Korner

The inkompetent komputer.

[Roy Mongiovi]

In article <333B82...@netcom.ca>,

Komputer Korner <kor...@netcom.ca> wrote:
>Yup, you summed up the question quite well, but how do you vote?
>Deep Searcher or Knowledge King?

Well, I'd have to say I vote for the "Knowledge King", provided you get
a reasonable search depth (which I think is pretty easy given the speed
of today's processors).

I think an evaluation function can approximate a deeper tree search
(with an exchange evaluator), and give the computer a better chance of
playing good moves if it has lots of smarts. Tree search just isn't
deep enough to find tactics in all positions. If there isn't an
amazing tactic, you need an evaluation function that can distinguish
between really good positions, and not so good positions.

I think that if the evaluation function isn't smart enough, there are
lots of effectively "do nothing" moves, and it makes it easier for the
program to insert do-nothings and exacerbate the horizon effect.

If the evaluation function can't tell two positions apart, tree search
doesn't help.

Of course, what I really want to know is when does a little version of
Deep Blue go on the market :-)

[mclane]

"Torstein Hall" <tors...@eunet.no> wrote:

>mclane <mcl...@prima.ruhr.de> skrev i artikkelen
><E7pKz...@news.prima.ruhr.de>...

>> "Christopher R. Dorr" <crd...@cinternet.net> wrote:
>>
>>

>> Statistic proves nothing ! A chess program consists of positions. Each
>> position can be evaluated. The programs give an evaluation, and they
>> search. Looking on each evaluation and on each main line gives you (in
>> a normal game of 50 moves) 100 events where you can SEE and this way
>> proof if a program plays good chess or not.

>Why are you always wrong? :)

I am not always wrong. I have said Rebel8 will be the leader of the
ssdf-list long time before they tested it, long time before any
error-margin could have shown this and with only a few samples of
games.

And I can tell you more examples like this. But thats all not
important. Or ?!

Sorry , there is an error in my above statement. I wanted to say:
A chess game consists of positions.

>Statistics prove a lot, within certain limits.
>Since chess consists out a very big number of positions, its impractical to
>test them all! You rather play some games, study the eval of the programs,
>and the results of the game and make your conclusion about most of the
>positions.
>Then you say with that one program is stronger than the other, within your
>margin of error. If you can calculate how big the probability of you beeing
>right or wrong is, then its statistics!

But statistics does not proof. It can only give numbers. And you
cannot say much about the event what cannot be said WITHOUT
statistics.

Anything we know from life, can be found out WITHOUT statistics.
Statistics is the inkompetent post-game-analysis of people who think
they have to explain what is clear to anybody.

[mclane]

hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>There's lots of doubt, Crafty's played stobor many times on both ICC and
>Chess.net... log on to ICC and "search +=crafty -=ratbert" and then
>"search -=crafty +=ratbert"

>The first command produces 65 wins for crafty... the second produces 10
>losses for crafty...

>As the saying goes,

>Q.E.D.

I do not believe in other people's analysis much.

I have stobor. I have crafty. I let the play against each other and
study the games.

Shall I show you the games in EMAILS ???

>: I don't understand why now crafty killed stobor. I though it was vice
>: versa.

>you sent me 3 games. the first, "stobor kills crafty, *but* stobor made
>a mistake in the endgame and lost." the second "stobor kills crafty, *but*
>stobor didn't realize that it had to stop the a-pawn from advancing and it
>lost." the third "stobor kills crafty, but crafty was lucky and found a
>repetition draw."

Right. THIS Stobor was BUGGY , and I thought Tom will fix these BUGS
before he participates in Paderborn. As he has shown, he participated
without fixing them. What a pity.

>Those were what I was talking about. It sounds like the old elementary
>school conversation, where a kid comes home with a black eye, blood all
>over his shirt. His dad asked "did you get into a fight?" The kid
>responds, eyes down, "yes.". Dad says "how'd you do?" Kid responds,
>"I beat the hell out of his fist with my face." :)

Come on. Why can't you accept that THE RESULT is not always that much
important like the content of the game.
I mean: would you mary a girl only because you have heard about her
size, weight and the color of her eyes without meeting her ?
Is the RESULT, the NUMBERS anything to you , guys ?

If you wish I play more games. But I stopped it because TOM said he
has made a new version , and I thought, my versions are too old now.

>: >Oh god no. That was Thorsten, not Tueschen. Let's not go down that road again.

>: >bruce

>: Do you really believe that I would have posted stobor kills crafty if
>: I would not be sure about this ?!
>: I have both programs, I have machines to find it out.
>: Nothing is easier. You don't need 100 or 200 games to show evidence.
>: If you have eyes to see and feelings a small sample says more to you
>: than any autoplayer can find out in 50 or more games.

>Exactly. I have enough evidence to convince myself.

Hm. There is really a big sea between you and me.
Not only the distance of different age, but also the different
point-of-view and ideology. Strange.

>: I don't understand why you have problems to believe that feelings can
>: replace statistic perfectly. Don't you love your wife although never
>: any evidence and statistic was made about your love ?!

>: BTW: The poster was mclane !

>I corrected it and appologized after Bruce pointed out the error. :)

No - I wanted to say: please use mclane instead of TH....

[mclane]

pre...@cs.rice.edu (Preston Briggs) wrote:

>Well, I'm very disappointed to seem the match terminated.
>Been enjoying the game. Indeed, about 10% of my company has
>been following the game, stopping by my office every day
>to check the progress.

WHAAT ? 10 % of your company followed the game ?!
Unbelievable. WHY was this so interesting for you ?!

>It's too bad, after all the initial work and the time invested in the
>play, to see the experiment trashed without result. Some people may
>think that the first game is significant -- I disagree. I'd say the
>first game was more along the lines of a shakedown run. It's
>unfortunate that provisions weren't made for such a test game to
>ensure that all the experimental apparatus was in place and stable.

>When you do experimental work like this, you have to be prepared to
>redo your experiments. Happens in lots of circumstances

> you have to be able to reproduce your results

> others have to be able to reproduce your results

> something went wrong and you have to correct it and restart
> the beginning

>These things happen all the time. It's why science, especially good
>science, is expensive. I can't tell you how many time I reran all the
>experiments described in my thesis. Over and over and over again.
>Very depressing. But in the end, the results were good (meaning well
>documented and reproducible).

This is my job too. But I have to find out BEFORE scientific-statistic
proofs my ideas.

[Robert Hyatt]

mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

: >There's lots of doubt, Crafty's played stobor many times on both ICC and
: >Chess.net... log on to ICC and "search +=crafty -=ratbert" and then
: >"search -=crafty +=ratbert"

: >The first command produces 65 wins for crafty... the second produces 10
: >losses for crafty...

: >As the saying goes,

: >Q.E.D.

: I do not believe in other people's analysis much.

: I have stobor. I have crafty. I let the play against each other and
: study the games.

: Shall I show you the games in EMAILS ???

Don't see what it would prove. I have 75 games I've watched, with Crafty
on a P6/200, ratbert on a P6/200... what more could I possibly want to
see?

: >: I don't understand why now crafty killed stobor. I though it was vice
: >: versa.

: >you sent me 3 games. the first, "stobor kills crafty, *but* stobor made
: >a mistake in the endgame and lost." the second "stobor kills crafty, *but*
: >stobor didn't realize that it had to stop the a-pawn from advancing and it
: >lost." the third "stobor kills crafty, but crafty was lucky and found a
: >repetition draw."

: Right. THIS Stobor was BUGGY , and I thought Tom will fix these BUGS
: before he participates in Paderborn. As he has shown, he participated
: without fixing them. What a pity.

: >Those were what I was talking about. It sounds like the old elementary
: >school conversation, where a kid comes home with a black eye, blood all
: >over his shirt. His dad asked "did you get into a fight?" The kid
: >responds, eyes down, "yes.". Dad says "how'd you do?" Kid responds,
: >"I beat the hell out of his fist with my face." :)

: Come on. Why can't you accept that THE RESULT is not always that much
: important like the content of the game.
: I mean: would you mary a girl only because you have heard about her
: size, weight and the color of her eyes without meeting her ?
: Is the RESULT, the NUMBERS anything to you , guys ?

So it's important how you play, but not whether you win or not? Then
why bother with who wins or loses at all? This is nonsensical...

: If you wish I play more games. But I stopped it because TOM said he

: has made a new version , and I thought, my versions are too old now.

the versions I play are whatever Tom has given to his IM friend to run
on the servers, which are always recent. I don't follow it any closer
than that...

: Hm. There is really a big sea between you and me.

: Not only the distance of different age, but also the different
: point-of-view and ideology. Strange.

Perhaps so. I tend to believe that if you win far more than you
lose, you are playing better. Or when I do something bad and Crafty
starts losing more than it wins, it is playing worse. In a single game,
the result might not be as revealing as the moves actually played. But
in 100 games or 500 games or even 20 games, the results begin to
accurately track the play. Can't be any other way, because the goal
is to win, if you win, you played well...

[brucemo]

Enrique Irazoqui wrote:

> They didn't play at 100:1, you shouldn't forget this. It's as if Genius 5,
> as far as I know the best at blitz, would beat Rebel 8 at 100:1. Say, G5 at
> 2 seconds and R8 at 200 seconds/move. I'm quite sure that in a 10 games
> match Genius 5 couldn't win one single game. Rebel 8 did win at 100:1. It
> must mean something. Better evaluations to begin with. And in this
> particular game the better evals were more important than a 4 ply deeper
> search. Only one game, I know, but a very significant game.

It is bad for a match of agreed upon duration to be unilaterally terminated
after one game.

I will flip the Genius/Rebel thing around so that it makes more sense, and
assume that Rebel gets two seconds and Genius gets 200. I think it is likely
that Rebel could not beat Genius in one game out of 10 at this time control.
But remember that this is a blitz time control for Rebel, and that this NPS
match was purposefully set up so that Rebel would get to use a tournament time
control. The expectation is that at shorter time controls, there would be
more benefit from the extra plies, so at longer time controls, the handicapped
program would be expected to perform better. I don't make this point, it's
someone else's.

Who knows what would happen, since we haven't seen the whole match, just one
game.

On Ed's web page, where he discusses this match, he mentions an argument
between Ed and Bob, in which Ed states that he think Deep Blue would be at
most 50 points better than a micro, and Bob states that Deep Blue would be at
least 200 better.

Well, neither point is proven from one game. In a ten game match, in order
for one side to demonstrate a performance of no worse than 50 points than its
opponent, it would have to score somewhere between 4.0 and 4.5. In order to
indicate a rating 200 points better, a program would have to score about 7.5.

So Ed needs to win 1.5 more before Bob's numbers are indicated to be
inaccurate, and he needs to win 3-3.5 more before Ed's numbers are indicated
to be accurate. I say "indicated" rather that "proven", because in a ten-game
match it is hard to prove much, but "indicated" is sufficient for purposes of
this bet.

So let's see more games.

bruce

[brucemo]

mclane wrote:

> But statistics does not proof. It can only give numbers. And you
> cannot say much about the event what cannot be said WITHOUT
> statistics.
>
> Anything we know from life, can be found out WITHOUT statistics.
> Statistics is the inkompetent post-game-analysis of people who think
> they have to explain what is clear to anybody.

It very much depends upon what questions you are asking.

If you want to know which program is likely to find a good positional
move, or will play beautiful chess, or play interesting chess, or play
well against random humans, or anything like that, then I'm not sure
how you'd even approach this with statistics involving games played
between two chess programs.

If you want to be able to say, "This program will win more than half of
the games, at this time control, with this hardware, with these opening
book, with these operators, if I let them play a match of infinite
duration", the you can say this with great accuracy in some cases. You
can't say it with perfect accuracy, but in many cases you can say it
with accuracy > 95%, and that's pretty close.

If two programs are very equally matched, you may have to play a
tremendous number of games to prove statistically (> 95%) that one will
beat the other more than half the time. If the match is a huge
blowout, you can say this with a shorter match.

It is useful to be able to attach a "percentage chance that what I am
saying is true" to a statement made about two chess programs, and
statistics let you do this.

bruce

[mclane]

Komputer Korner <kor...@netcom.ca> wrote:

>Roy Mongiovi wrote:
>>
>> What I'd like to know is why everyone seems to invest so much EGO in
>> this match. It maybe makes sense for Ed, since he has financial
>> investment in Rebel, and for Bob, since he's trying to do a good thing
>> by making crafty available as a breadboard for computer chess
>> development.

Aha.

>>
>> But I'll be damned if I can figure out why the rest of you jump on
>> everything either of them says about their programs or the match.

For me it is an ideologic event: materialism and idealism fight in a
game of chess.

>>
>> If the match could have shed some light on the truth of tree searching
>> versus evaluation function, I think that would have been a good thing.
>> It seems to me that one game isn't enough.
>>
>> Here's my hypothesis. Tree search is necessary to find combinations.
>> A chess program can't play a combination shorter than its tree search,
>> since it doesn't plan from move to move. In the absence of such a
>> combination, the evaluation function has to be able to discriminate
>> among all the positions it examines in order to guide the search toward
>> the most promising continuation.

How will you drive on the motoway, if you don't know which motorway
ends where, and also, without knowing where to find your destination
on the route ?!

Chess is exactly this.

They all drive. Some drive fast, some slow. But nobody knows where the
motoway will bring them.

>>
>> So I guess the question is what percentage of the time can an excellent
>> evaluation function avoid positions where there are tactics beyond its
>> search capability, but within the search capability of a faster
>> program?
>> --

Ugh ! Much confusion.
We have the finder-programs: The King
We have the selective-search-programs that are very fast and do not
evaluate much: Fritz
We have the ordinary programs that are not much selective
(forward-pruning) and smart in search and strong in tactics and what I
call brute-force: Ferret, crafty,
We have the slow-knowledge-based programs: Hiarcs, Mchess
We have Rebel, that is fast but with small knowledge-functions and not
very good in tactics, but this is not easy to register because Rebel
is able to direct the game into areas it likes.

These programs are all very different.

>> Roy J. Mongiovi System Support Specialist IV Information Technology
>> Georgia Institute of Technology
>> Tough are the souls that tread the knife's edge Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0715
>> Jethro Tull - "Passion Play" r...@prism.gatech.edu

>Yup, you summed up the question quite well, but how do you vote?

>Deep Searcher or Knowledge King?

[brucemo]

mclane wrote:

> I have stobor. I have crafty. I let the play against each other and
> study the games.

Go for it. I suggest you play the games out to +5 or so, or to a point well
beyond where you think it's reasonable to declare a draw, otherwise all sorts
of arguments will ensue.

> hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

> >you sent me 3 games. the first, "stobor kills crafty, *but* stobor made
> >a mistake in the endgame and lost." the second "stobor kills crafty, *but*
> >stobor didn't realize that it had to stop the a-pawn from advancing and it
> >lost." the third "stobor kills crafty, but crafty was lucky and found a
> >repetition draw."
>
> Right. THIS Stobor was BUGGY , and I thought Tom will fix these BUGS
> before he participates in Paderborn. As he has shown, he participated
> without fixing them. What a pity.

We all have to produce non-buggy versions, and if we don't we lose. If we
lose, we shouldn't whine about the bugs. Bugs are part of a program.

And bugs in the actual core engine are an especially integral part. You want
to improve endgame strength, perhaps you will make something else worse. Who
knows.

> >Those were what I was talking about. It sounds like the old elementary
> >school conversation, where a kid comes home with a black eye, blood all
> >over his shirt. His dad asked "did you get into a fight?" The kid
> >responds, eyes down, "yes.". Dad says "how'd you do?" Kid responds,
> >"I beat the hell out of his fist with my face." :)
>
> Come on. Why can't you accept that THE RESULT is not always that much
> important like the content of the game.
> I mean: would you mary a girl only because you have heard about her
> size, weight and the color of her eyes without meeting her ?
> Is the RESULT, the NUMBERS anything to you , guys ?

Traditionally, the result of a chess game is determined by who resigns at the
end, isn't it? You don't get 1/3 of a point for being a pawn up at move 23.

> If you wish I play more games. But I stopped it because TOM said he
> has made a new version , and I thought, my versions are too old now.

By all means play more.

By the way. Doesn't Stobor have less knowledge than Crafty? I thought you
were a big proponent of the whole knowledge thing. Are you trying to prove
that speed beats smarts, and isn't this very different than what you usually
say?

bruce

[mclane]

r...@prism.gatech.edu (Roy Mongiovi) wrote:

>In article <333B82...@netcom.ca>,
>Komputer Korner <kor...@netcom.ca> wrote:

>>Yup, you summed up the question quite well, but how do you vote?
>>Deep Searcher or Knowledge King?

>Well, I'd have to say I vote for the "Knowledge King", provided you get

>a reasonable search depth (which I think is pretty easy given the speed
>of today's processors).

>I think an evaluation function can approximate a deeper tree search
>(with an exchange evaluator), and give the computer a better chance of
>playing good moves if it has lots of smarts. Tree search just isn't
>deep enough to find tactics in all positions. If there isn't an
>amazing tactic, you need an evaluation function that can distinguish
>between really good positions, and not so good positions.

>I think that if the evaluation function isn't smart enough, there are
>lots of effectively "do nothing" moves, and it makes it easier for the
>program to insert do-nothings and exacerbate the horizon effect.

Most positions are balanced. Do nothing is maybe smart, but not very
efficient if the opponent is a human.
In my opinion we have to learn the programs to follow and to realize a
plan.

Some programs do this.

>If the evaluation function can't tell two positions apart, tree search
>doesn't help.

>Of course, what I really want to know is when does a little version of
>Deep Blue go on the market :-)
>--

Why . I have enogh pocket-calculators at home. I don't need another
one, and I am not interested how fast it can do the square-root of
4532345 . I mean, one solar-calculator is enough. I don't need another
one that eats amazing energy.

[Ed Schroder]

From: brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com>

> They didn't play at 100:1, you shouldn't forget this. It's as if
> Genius 5, as far as I know the best at blitz, would beat Rebel 8
> at 100:1. Say, G5 at 2 seconds and R8 at 200 seconds/move. I'm
> quite sure that in a 10 games match Genius 5 couldn't win one single
> game. Rebel 8 did win at 100:1. It must mean something. Better
> evaluations to begin with. And in this particular game the better
> evals were more important than a 4 ply deeper search. Only one
> game, I know, but a very significant game.

: It is bad for a match of agreed upon duration to be unilaterally
: terminated after one game.

I know I disapointed many people. I also know that my decision can
be (and will be) explained in many different ways. That's life and
I accept it.

: I will flip the Genius/Rebel thing around so that it makes more

: sense, and assume that Rebel gets two seconds and Genius gets 200.
: I think it is likely that Rebel could not beat Genius in one game out
: of 10 at this time control. But remember that this is a blitz time
: control for Rebel, and that this NPS match was purposefully set up
: so that Rebel would get to use a tournament time control. The
: expectation is that at shorter time controls, there would be more
: benefit from the extra plies, so at longer time controls, the
: handicapped program would be expected to perform better. I don't
: make this point, it's someone else's.

Yup, my views in this area are exclusively based on tournament time
level. Blitz doesn't tell me anything.

: Who knows what would happen, since we haven't seen the whole match,
: just one game.

: On Ed's web page, where he discusses this match, he mentions an
: argument between Ed and Bob, in which Ed states that he think Deep Blue
: would be at most 50 points better than a micro, and Bob states that
: Deep Blue would be at least 200 better.

: Well, neither point is proven from one game. In a ten game match,
: in order for one side to demonstrate a performance of no worse than
: 50 points than its opponent, it would have to score somewhere between
: 4.0 and 4.5. In order to indicate a rating 200 points better, a
: program would have to score about 7.5.

: So Ed needs to win 1.5 more before Bob's numbers are indicated to be
: inaccurate, and he needs to win 3-3.5 more before Ed's numbers are
: indicated to be accurate. I say "indicated" rather that "proven",
: because in a ten-game match it is hard to prove much, but "indicated"
: is sufficient for purposes of this bet.

Just for the record, I never claimed victory as some people have
indicated here. All I said is that I have proven my point.

My points...
a.. An evaluation function is (can be) worth MANY plies;
b.. No program thinking many plies deeper is safe anymore *AS LONG AS*
the slower program can reach a *certain safe depth* which lowers
the tactical advantage of the fast program.
c.. These days with machines like the PP-200 *AND* playing on tournament
level (no blitz!) the slower program isn't without chances to win.

Game one has proven this.
I do not claim more.

The one game *doesn't prove* Rebel would have won the 10 game match.

- Ed Schroder -

: So let's see more games.

: bruce

[mclane]

brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote:

>mclane wrote:

>> But statistics does not proof. It can only give numbers. And you
>> cannot say much about the event what cannot be said WITHOUT
>> statistics.
>>
>> Anything we know from life, can be found out WITHOUT statistics.
>> Statistics is the inkompetent post-game-analysis of people who think
>> they have to explain what is clear to anybody.

>It very much depends upon what questions you are asking.

Main questions like:

1. Do you love me ?
2. Is the meal ready ?
3. do you want a cup of tea ?
4. What is your telephone number...?
5. when will I see you again ?
6. How late is it ?
7. What the hell Chris, is it playing now ?
8. Chris, have you made a backup of the source-code ?
9. Where is the toilette ?

What does your statistics say to these nice questions ? Any sensefull
ideas ?

>If you want to know which program is likely to find a good positional
>move, or will play beautiful chess, or play interesting chess, or play
>well against random humans, or anything like that, then I'm not sure
>how you'd even approach this with statistics involving games played
>between two chess programs.

>If you want to be able to say, "This program will win more than half of
>the games, at this time control, with this hardware, with these opening
>book, with these operators, if I let them play a match of infinite
>duration", the you can say this with great accuracy in some cases. You
>can't say it with perfect accuracy, but in many cases you can say it
>with accuracy > 95%, and that's pretty close.

But there are SOOOOOO many parameters that change the experiment:
the time
the hardware
the hash-table size
the opening-book-line
the learning-function of the opening-book
the color you have
sometimes you can even change parameters in the program like styles...

>If two programs are very equally matched, you may have to play a
>tremendous number of games to prove statistically (> 95%) that one will
>beat the other more than half the time. If the match is a huge
>blowout, you can say this with a shorter match.

I can do this with a small sample of games , only by looking into the
search-information like
depth, search-time, branch, evaluation, main-line.

Thats all i need. Give me a few sample-games to study and I am faster
than any autoplayer. It's easy. Anybody can do this. Anybody can do
this maybe in other areas, cooking, other people can do this
differenciating beer-quality, others in finding differences in
red-wine, others can find out in other fields. I can do it with
chess-programs.

>It is useful to be able to attach a "percentage chance that what I am
>saying is true" to a statement made about two chess programs, and
>statistics let you do this.

We prove the statistics later, after I have an idea about.
Normally I am right and faster. You don't believe it ? Ask chris.

>bruce

[mclane]

brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote:

>mclane wrote:

>> I have stobor. I have crafty. I let the play against each other and
>> study the games.

>Go for it. I suggest you play the games out to +5 or so, or to a point well
>beyond where you think it's reasonable to declare a draw, otherwise all sorts
>of arguments will ensue.

Ok, I will ask Tom for the latest version.

>> hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>> Come on. Why can't you accept that THE RESULT is not always that much
>> important like the content of the game.
>> I mean: would you mary a girl only because you have heard about her
>> size, weight and the color of her eyes without meeting her ?
>> Is the RESULT, the NUMBERS anything to you , guys ?

>Traditionally, the result of a chess game is determined by who resigns at the
>end, isn't it? You don't get 1/3 of a point for being a pawn up at move 23.

Thats completely new for me, Bruce ! Ha ha ha !! How can you ever
made progress in you US-chess-programs if you don't study the
games.... :-(

>> If you wish I play more games. But I stopped it because TOM said he
>> has made a new version , and I thought, my versions are too old now.

>By all means play more.

Grrrrrrr :-(

>By the way. Doesn't Stobor have less knowledge than Crafty? I thought you
>were a big proponent of the whole knowledge thing. Are you trying to prove
>that speed beats smarts, and isn't this very different than what you usually
>say?

Stobor, mainly the versions I liked, played very nice chess.
You are thinking in clichees. I don't know why you do this.
I could send you back your main maxime: I am interested in the
result, Bruce !

But - Sorry. we are speaking different languages.
How can we ever find together. Maybe it is good that we have this big
sea between us.

Have you ever replayed Bobby Fischers games. Or did you only study his
results, 6:0 against whoever ? I mean, such a number is very
interesting, but the game was more interesting....

>bruce

[mclane]

hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
>: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>: Come on. Why can't you accept that THE RESULT is not always that much
>: important like the content of the game.
>: I mean: would you mary a girl only because you have heard about her
>: size, weight and the color of her eyes without meeting her ?
>: Is the RESULT, the NUMBERS anything to you , guys ?

>So it's important how you play, but not whether you win or not? Then

>why bother with who wins or loses at all? This is nonsensical...

I have never said that it is NOT IMPORTANT IF YOU WIN OR LOSE.
BUT: if you tell me you have bought marmelade for 2 $ and you have
bought red-wine for 10 $, what does this tell us about the QUALITY of
the marmelade or the wine?

NOTHING !

So it is with chess-games. IMO. You might see these games from another
point of view. I am not interested in prices or numbers anyway. I am
interested in chess-games.
As a tester for me the result is not primary important. The results do
not help much to improve something.
If I tell you this version makes 40 % and this version makes 60 % you
don't know ANYTHING about how to improve any of these versions.
The only thing you know is: this version is maybe stronger.

But I have to find out, how to improve a program, therefore the GAMES
are much more interesting for me, than the results.
Because if I study the games, I can later tell the programmer: your
program always loses because of the following things, see here in this
game, move soandso.

>: If you wish I play more games. But I stopped it because TOM said he

>: has made a new version , and I thought, my versions are too old now.

>the versions I play are whatever Tom has given to his IM friend to run

>on the servers, which are always recent. I don't follow it any closer
>than that...

Thats your main problem. You don't follow. You are somehow fat.
(sorry ! ) . I mean: you HAVE to follow if you want to give ANY
comment on ANY program. Without following it's games, you can't say
anything.

>: Hm. There is really a big sea between you and me.
>: Not only the distance of different age, but also the different
>: point-of-view and ideology. Strange.

>Perhaps so. I tend to believe that if you win far more than you
>lose, you are playing better.

But how will you make progress if you only know the above statement ?!
If somebody is better, he is better. Brilliant. Thats so primitive I
can't answer anything to that.

BUT WHY IS A BETTER THAN B ?

Thats it, what is important. Maybe not for you, because you don't want
to make progress , but for me. Because the programmers I work with,
want to make progress. And many of them do make progress.
If you are not interested in HOW YOUR PROGRAM PLAYS, thats of course
your problem, not mine.

>Or when I do something bad and Crafty
>starts losing more than it wins, it is playing worse. In a single game,
>the result might not be as revealing as the moves actually played. But
>in 100 games or 500 games or even 20 games, the results begin to
>accurately track the play. Can't be any other way, because the goal
>is to win, if you win, you played well...

I don't need 100 or 500 games to find out, because I study the games.

Maybe you need more games because you are more shallow. Or you are
quantifying. I try to qualify the games.

You need more samples because you only look for the results. What a
pity.

[Robert Hyatt]

mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

: >mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
: >: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

: >: Come on. Why can't you accept that THE RESULT is not always that much
: >: important like the content of the game.
: >: I mean: would you mary a girl only because you have heard about her
: >: size, weight and the color of her eyes without meeting her ?
: >: Is the RESULT, the NUMBERS anything to you , guys ?

: >So it's important how you play, but not whether you win or not? Then
: >why bother with who wins or loses at all? This is nonsensical...

: I have never said that it is NOT IMPORTANT IF YOU WIN OR LOSE.
: BUT: if you tell me you have bought marmelade for 2 $ and you have
: bought red-wine for 10 $, what does this tell us about the QUALITY of
: the marmelade or the wine?

: NOTHING !

: So it is with chess-games. IMO. You might see these games from another
: point of view. I am not interested in prices or numbers anyway. I am
: interested in chess-games.
: As a tester for me the result is not primary important. The results do
: not help much to improve something.
: If I tell you this version makes 40 % and this version makes 60 % you
: don't know ANYTHING about how to improve any of these versions.
: The only thing you know is: this version is maybe stronger.

Then perhaps I see why you don't like deep blue. They have been known to
play some of the ugliest moves on the face of the planet. Ugly to me in
any case. Ugly to IM's watching too. But they won every one of those ugly
games. So *maybe* ugly to me doesn't also mean *bad*... just "ugly to me".

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I suspect DB thought it was beautiful,
since it won. :)

: But I have to find out, how to improve a program, therefore the GAMES

: are much more interesting for me, than the results.
: Because if I study the games, I can later tell the programmer: your
: program always loses because of the following things, see here in this
: game, move soandso.

: >: If you wish I play more games. But I stopped it because TOM said he
: >: has made a new version , and I thought, my versions are too old now.

: >the versions I play are whatever Tom has given to his IM friend to run
: >on the servers, which are always recent. I don't follow it any closer
: >than that...

: Thats your main problem. You don't follow. You are somehow fat.
: (sorry ! ) . I mean: you HAVE to follow if you want to give ANY
: comment on ANY program. Without following it's games, you can't say
: anything.

There's hardly a game I don't follow. I have a special logging daemon on
my linux box that diverts the log files for every game against a computer
opponent into a special directory where they won't get removed or overwritten.
I look at them all...

: >: Hm. There is really a big sea between you and me.

: >: Not only the distance of different age, but also the different
: >: point-of-view and ideology. Strange.

: >Perhaps so. I tend to believe that if you win far more than you
: >lose, you are playing better.

: But how will you make progress if you only know the above statement ?!
: If somebody is better, he is better. Brilliant. Thats so primitive I
: can't answer anything to that.

: BUT WHY IS A BETTER THAN B ?

: Thats it, what is important. Maybe not for you, because you don't want
: to make progress , but for me. Because the programmers I work with,
: want to make progress. And many of them do make progress.
: If you are not interested in HOW YOUR PROGRAM PLAYS, thats of course
: your problem, not mine.

But it's impossible to not understand the above, and still win games. Because
there comes a time where you have to improve something that is ineffective, or
you lose that class of games. So if a program is playing and winning, it can't
be "luck" all the time. Some games are certainly decided by the flip of a coin,
but most aren't... If I thought I didn't know enough about chess to evaluate
what Crafty was doing wrong, I'd be smart enough to quit fooling with it...
There'd be no point in continuing under that circumstance...

: >Or when I do something bad and Crafty

: >starts losing more than it wins, it is playing worse. In a single game,
: >the result might not be as revealing as the moves actually played. But
: >in 100 games or 500 games or even 20 games, the results begin to
: >accurately track the play. Can't be any other way, because the goal
: >is to win, if you win, you played well...

: I don't need 100 or 500 games to find out, because I study the games.

: Maybe you need more games because you are more shallow. Or you are
: quantifying. I try to qualify the games.

: You need more samples because you only look for the results. What a
: pity.

not a pity at all. The goal is to *win*. If it does that, on a regular
basis, it *must* be playing well. I can't, for the life of me, figure out
how you can think the quality of the moves is more important than the final
result. In one game, I agree with you. But if I beat you 400 out of 500,
there *must* be plenty of quality on my side, or else plenty of sorry moves
on your side. Can't be any other way...

[Robert Hyatt]

mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
: brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote:

: >mclane wrote:

: >> I have stobor. I have crafty. I let the play against each other and
: >> study the games.

: >Go for it. I suggest you play the games out to +5 or so, or to a point well
: >beyond where you think it's reasonable to declare a draw, otherwise all sorts
: >of arguments will ensue.

: Ok, I will ask Tom for the latest version.

: >> hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

: >> Come on. Why can't you accept that THE RESULT is not always that much
: >> important like the content of the game.
: >> I mean: would you mary a girl only because you have heard about her
: >> size, weight and the color of her eyes without meeting her ?
: >> Is the RESULT, the NUMBERS anything to you , guys ?

: >Traditionally, the result of a chess game is determined by who resigns at the

: >end, isn't it? You don't get 1/3 of a point for being a pawn up at move 23.

: Thats completely new for me, Bruce ! Ha ha ha !! How can you ever
: made progress in you US-chess-programs if you don't study the
: games.... :-(

: >> If you wish I play more games. But I stopped it because TOM said he
: >> has made a new version , and I thought, my versions are too old now.

: >By all means play more.

: Grrrrrrr :-(

: >By the way. Doesn't Stobor have less knowledge than Crafty? I thought you
: >were a big proponent of the whole knowledge thing. Are you trying to prove
: >that speed beats smarts, and isn't this very different than what you usually
: >say?

: Stobor, mainly the versions I liked, played very nice chess.
: You are thinking in clichees. I don't know why you do this.
: I could send you back your main maxime: I am interested in the
: result, Bruce !

: But - Sorry. we are speaking different languages.
: How can we ever find together. Maybe it is good that we have this big
: sea between us.

: Have you ever replayed Bobby Fischers games. Or did you only study his
: results, 6:0 against whoever ? I mean, such a number is very
: interesting, but the game was more interesting....

: >bruce

But 6-0 says a lot by itself. It says Fischer was playing good chess. I
also study games Crafty plays. But I also pay attention to the results.
I've never won a tournament by playing nice moves, but I've won plenty
by winning games...

[Dave Gomboc]

In article <E7rJM...@news.prima.ruhr.de>,

mclane <mcl...@prima.ruhr.de> wrote:
>"Torstein Hall" <tors...@eunet.no> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>mclane <mcl...@prima.ruhr.de> skrev i artikkelen
>><E7pKz...@news.prima.ruhr.de>...
>>> "Christopher R. Dorr" <crd...@cinternet.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>
>>> Statistic proves nothing ! A chess program consists of positions. Each
>>> position can be evaluated. The programs give an evaluation, and they
>>> search. Looking on each evaluation and on each main line gives you (in
>>> a normal game of 50 moves) 100 events where you can SEE and this way
>>> proof if a program plays good chess or not.
>
>>Why are you always wrong? :)
>
>I am not always wrong. I have said Rebel8 will be the leader of the
>ssdf-list long time before they tested it, long time before any
>error-margin could have shown this and with only a few samples of
>games.

I said in my review (it can be found on the Rebel Home Page near
yours, Thorsten) that I would be very surprised if Rebel didn't emerge
at the top of the SSDF list. :-)

Could you translate your review into English? It looks quite entertaining
but all I can figure out are the chess moves!

Dave Gomboc
drgo...@a.stu.athabascau.ca

[mclane]

hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>But 6-0 says a lot by itself. It says Fischer was playing good chess. I
>also study games Crafty plays. But I also pay attention to the results.
>I've never won a tournament by playing nice moves, but I've won plenty
>by winning games...

Sometimes somebody is into a crisis and for some reasons is NOT
producing 6-0 results.

We should share this difficult times with them and try to help them to
come out of this crisis.

Because this is, what life is about: to share the good and the bad
stages.

Working on the same goal is what connects all people.

If you can build one temple, you will be friends afterwards.

I waited long for her new cd. But she came out with it, in the end.

She is still smiling. I hope this will never change.

[mclane]

hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
>: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>Then perhaps I see why you don't like deep blue. They have been known to
>play some of the ugliest moves on the face of the planet. Ugly to me in
>any case. Ugly to IM's watching too. But they won every one of those ugly
>games. So *maybe* ugly to me doesn't also mean *bad*... just "ugly to me".

>Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I suspect DB thought it was beautiful,
>since it won. :)

THANK YOU for your understanding of my deepest feelings.
I don't want to see anything beautiful at all. The beauty comes from
inside of the body.

Winning means only outer things. Winning is only for making money.
Winning is for survival, beauty in a game is for the soul.

>: Thats your main problem. You don't follow. You are somehow fat.
>: (sorry ! ) . I mean: you HAVE to follow if you want to give ANY
>: comment on ANY program. Without following it's games, you can't say
>: anything.

>There's hardly a game I don't follow. I have a special logging daemon on
>my linux box that diverts the log files for every game against a computer
>opponent into a special directory where they won't get removed or overwritten.
>I look at them all...

Now - thats the Bob Hyatt I could live with !!!
For me the beauty that lives into the moves, into the sense of them,
is much more than the result, if it kills kasparov or Ananse, the
result is not my main goal.

It is like listening to music !
It doesn't matter if it is classic music,
or Joe Jackson or Elvis or Sting or Tracy Chapman,
it lives into the songs, into the rythm. And you can feel it wether
you listen to Mahlers symphonies, or if you listen to Leonard Cohen or
to Neil Diamond or to Sally Oldfield or or or or.

It is the same with chess, and computerchess.
Ok - the result is ok. I like to win.
Like anybody else. But if I see something important within a loss,
within a body, call it soul or spirit or IDEA, call it quality in the
quantity, than my intuition say: hold on, whats this ?
Within this massive bullshit or shallow piece, there is some quality.
Lets try to increase the quality parts.

So I try to work out with the programmers or the producers to make
cinderella clean, to clear her from all the dust and in the end, she
will be winning, maybe.

>: Thats it, what is important. Maybe not for you, because you don't want
>: to make progress , but for me. Because the programmers I work with,
>: want to make progress. And many of them do make progress.
>: If you are not interested in HOW YOUR PROGRAM PLAYS, thats of course
>: your problem, not mine.

>But it's impossible to not understand the above, and still win games. Because
>there comes a time where you have to improve something that is ineffective, or
>you lose that class of games. So if a program is playing and winning, it can't
>be "luck" all the time. Some games are certainly decided by the flip of a coin,
>but most aren't... If I thought I didn't know enough about chess to evaluate
>what Crafty was doing wrong, I'd be smart enough to quit fooling with it...
>There'd be no point in continuing under that circumstance...

Ok. Confirm.

>: You need more samples because you only look for the results. What a
>: pity.

>not a pity at all. The goal is to *win*.

I have a different way to come to the same goal.

My way is not valuing the results.
I could not do this.
That is like valuing Tracy Chapmans work by counting the number of her
sold CDs.

I can't do that. I love her music, so the WORK of her is important for
me, not how many cd's she sells to the world.

I hope you understand this.

>If it does that, on a regular
>basis, it *must* be playing well. I can't, for the life of me, figure out
>how you can think the quality of the moves is more important than the final
>result. In one game, I agree with you. But if I beat you 400 out of 500,
>there *must* be plenty of quality on my side, or else plenty of sorry moves
>on your side. Can't be any other way...

I have waited years for her next cd. It took a while.
I was not knowing if she still is alive. America is far away from
here.
But I had her older cds : Tracy chapman, crossroads and matters of the
heart.

I knew she will come out with an new work.

It is the same way with programmers work. You know that he has the
capacity for much more, you wait, and suddenly it comes out.

For a long time in my life I was only consumer. But then I found out
that this is not satisfying me. I wanted to help the programmers to
make the products somehow better.

Also I studied their work much, after a while it was difficult to
SPEAK with other friends about the program, because I was so deep in
the work that it was difficult to share experience. Suddenly I saw
that the programmers are the same deep into it, and that for them it
was the same CHILD they studied, ok - from a much better point of view
- but not with less emotions.

This was the day I tried to change my hobby. And I liked it.

[Rolf Tueschen]

Bob Hyatt caught in the act ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

Bob, sorry, but you'll regret that one ... :))

Read please the following coming from your brush:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:
[it must have been written on March 26 around 20:30 GMT]

>Rebel played very well. However, in fairness with this position, I
>also tested with genius as well, and the funny part is, from the white
>side, given even fairly short times to move, Rebel, Genius *and* Crafty
>would follow the same path.

> White simply ended up with a good position
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>after the first 10-15 moves, and the rest of the white plan almost played
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>itself.
~~~~~

Bob, what's thwe ,eaning of the quoted? Talking in chessplaying terms ...?

I try to translate: Rebel's position was so good that all afterwards he could
play without greater efforts to the finally winning position after move 33.
All played itself. Where is Krafti in that scenario? Well, he was without any
defense ...
Why all this mess?
Well, Bob, you must prepare an answer for this question. My guess is as
follows:
Because Krafti hadn't this magnificent book till move 30 ...

Bob, don't play the clown. You know best what you were talking about with this.
Don't try to make an easy winner by mating an innocent german after giving him
too much crack. :))

I mean you had to explain your liner about moves 10-15 a bit more precisesly,
ok?

Don't repeat the song of bad reading of your posts. As concerning
*misunderstanding* that's a totally different story of course.

> Of course, as you point out, white had to reach that position,
>and black had to allow it. Black was thinking a little too far toward
>the endgame, trying to preserve a winning advantage, but, as a result,
>didn't make it through the middlegame unscathed.

Bob, in ten years we will still be amused about this uppercut to your own chin.

I'm sure about it that you will join us in near future when the whole irony
will come visible for you ... Not that you are wrong in one single word but
that you spoke them in the situation you were really mistreated by this Rebel
beasty. Sorry, not you yourself but your baby blue ... Hi, hi, hi. Ha, ha, ha.

>: Look, that's what I criticised in a former post. If you argue like that you
>: could wipe off all the brilliancy and magical of every single won game of
>: Mikhail Tal for instance. You simple argue backwards having the later results
>: in mind. And you *show* that after this or that Tal never had the chance to sac
>: this or that.

>: If you continue for some time on this -- you'll end in writing books about 1.e4
>: and wins. Or 1.d4 and mate in 45 moves. Or you could say, that you end up with
>: playing against god if you start playing chess. It's the same with the egg and
>: the duck. Or what, if our parents wouldn't have had such a ball we all wouldn't
>: be here ....

>: For me at least Rebel won a nice game in a style Kasparov couldn't do better
>: against Deep Blue. So we had in nucleus what will happen in May. I mean, it
>: became quite clear that Rebel had enough chess wisdom more than Crafty to
>: equalize/neutralize the exhorbitant time factor 100.

>: Don't you agree on this?

>in this one game, yes. More games would be more revealing. For example,
>in the Korrespondence Kup, rebel and Crafty are using equal time, and the
>position is dead even. So either Crafty is lucky to be alive in the Kup
>game, or Rebel was somewhat lucky to survive with a huge search handicap
>in the NPS game. But there's luck somewhere. Where, we can argue about
>for a long time. I plan on discovering which is right myself, with data,
>not discussion...

I hope so. Please.

Because you are so peaceful let me change my argument: Kasparov wo'nt be
interested in dubbing Rebel's method against Crafty. In terms of real chess
it's so average for a champ to play like this. No, GK will try to impute s.th.
more suspenseful. I don'tr know what. I could demonstrate it afterwards. The
last time -- for the 20th time -- it was the situation around the Bxh7
possibility. None had shown some reaction when I pointed out that the two K's
in the past had several spooky commercils with prgs which are certainly not
regarded as good as DB of today. Explain me why they did this and we could
judge about GK's actual attitude for DB. You already ridiculed my amateur
attempts to look behind the front show but how could we do any research than by
first speculating/ hypothysing a bit ...?
You could also add some insight to this from your huge experiences on ICC and
from several contacts with the GMs. Did none tell you his private view about
the whole circus? Bill, Roman and others? These guys once could taste of the
top class players. Either Fischer or Kasparov. Ask them, none would give a dime
in a bet for DB against GK. Your 4-2's not bad. But ask thwem what Kasparov
could do if he really wanted ... My opinion: he could always win 6-0. Period. I
forgot in a tournament game of course. All the funny stuff you follow on ICC is
rapid maximum. Or am I wrongly informed about that?

snips

>You read, you misunderstand, then you misquote. I know you can do better...

>: P.S. Remember I gave my betting at the beginning of the game with 6 to 7 points
>: FOR Rebel as the winner. Maybe that was for a great joy all over this planet
>: ..

>: But I did this from my experience with one special single game against a former
>: version of Crafty. I sent Bob the notation of the game. His main reaction was
>: not to be understood at the time: He wrote s.th. like the following: you must
>: play Crafty on a P 200 ...

>I believe my response was "play the real crafty" on icc/chess.net.

Yes, and you then advised to update the 133 to 200.

>I have no
>idea what version you used, what book you used, what settings you used, etc.
>Doesn't take much to make it screw up badly. The one on ICC doesn't...

>: And I had informed Bob about my observation that Crafty seemed to play worse
>: when I had played a move he didn't expect/foresee. Seems to be a principal
>: weakness in non-rapid games for Bob's feature. All this was discussed recently
>: in another thread. Could one win strength by playing mainly the limited (known)
>: search depth of the opponent? Seems to me that Bob did some interesting stuff.
>: Ok, it's mere clearvoyance again. :)

>and I don't know what this might mean. If you'd like to play a game, here on ICC,
>where it is *forbidden* for you to *ever* play the move Crafty expects...

Nahhh, that's not fair to expose my talents in public. :)

>I'll be
>happy to oblige, and will put money on that outcome. (hint... any piece defended
>only once is not defended at all should crafty take it... :) )

But you play touched and move? -- Now I reached this tremendeous Elo score in
computer chess ...

[Robert Hyatt]

mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

: >mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
: >: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

: >Then perhaps I see why you don't like deep blue. They have been known to

: >play some of the ugliest moves on the face of the planet. Ugly to me in
: >any case. Ugly to IM's watching too. But they won every one of those ugly
: >games. So *maybe* ugly to me doesn't also mean *bad*... just "ugly to me".

: >Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I suspect DB thought it was beautiful,
: >since it won. :)

: THANK YOU for your understanding of my deepest feelings.

: I don't want to see anything beautiful at all. The beauty comes from
: inside of the body.

: Winning means only outer things. Winning is only for making money.
: Winning is for survival, beauty in a game is for the soul.

: >: Thats your main problem. You don't follow. You are somehow fat.

: >: (sorry ! ) . I mean: you HAVE to follow if you want to give ANY
: >: comment on ANY program. Without following it's games, you can't say
: >: anything.

: >There's hardly a game I don't follow. I have a special logging daemon on
: >my linux box that diverts the log files for every game against a computer
: >opponent into a special directory where they won't get removed or overwritten.
: >I look at them all...

: Now - thats the Bob Hyatt I could live with !!!

: For me the beauty that lives into the moves, into the sense of them,
: is much more than the result, if it kills kasparov or Ananse, the
: result is not my main goal.

I'm worried, because we might agree on something. However, try this:

There are two goals in what I do:

(1) make crafty better, by modifying things that I believe make it better,
and then determine how I did. This is much easier to test, by simply playing
a bunch of games against a known quality of opponent, and see how the results
look. If it's worse, chances are the change was bad. If it wins more, chances
are the changes are good.

(2) make crafty better by trying to understand what it is not doing well.
Here I get data by (a) asking; (b) going over (mostly) losses with a fine-
tooth comb. I try to look at every loss, to see if I can locate a
"theme". If 5 losses were due to something "similar" then I have something
to work on that might deliver good results... If the losses are all from
different problems, I typically "wait" to see which one needs attention
first. For a long while it was king safety. Then endgames. Then passed
pawns. Then pawn majorities. then ....

So I do look beyond the wins and losses. total wins and losses is revealing
*if* you are talking about a large number of games against known strong
opponents. Individual games can shed light on weaknesses that need
attention. I pay attention to both.

however, at the end, the final result it still a desire to play Kasparov
a match of 10 games and end up 10-0. Not to play great quality chess and
end up 0-10... the winning and losing has to figure in.

: >But it's impossible to not understand the above, and still win games. Because

: >there comes a time where you have to improve something that is ineffective, or
: >you lose that class of games. So if a program is playing and winning, it can't
: >be "luck" all the time. Some games are certainly decided by the flip of a coin,
: >but most aren't... If I thought I didn't know enough about chess to evaluate
: >what Crafty was doing wrong, I'd be smart enough to quit fooling with it...
: >There'd be no point in continuing under that circumstance...

: Ok. Confirm.

: >: You need more samples because you only look for the results. What a
: >: pity.

: >not a pity at all. The goal is to *win*.

: I have a different way to come to the same goal.

: My way is not valuing the results.
: I could not do this.
: That is like valuing Tracy Chapmans work by counting the number of her
: sold CDs.

That's actually a workable standard, because most people don't by "crap"
(or is that spelled "rap"?? I forget) So if an album sells a lot, it is
probably good music. Yes, I know, the "crap" albums are the exception...
for reasons I don't understand and don't want to understand.

I also rent movies based on the fact that they are the #1 rental because
generally those are good movies. After I watch it, I can discuss the quality
or lack thereof. But I have to see it first...

[Robert Hyatt]

mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

: >But 6-0 says a lot by itself. It says Fischer was playing good chess. I

: >also study games Crafty plays. But I also pay attention to the results.
: >I've never won a tournament by playing nice moves, but I've won plenty
: >by winning games...

: Sometimes somebody is into a crisis and for some reasons is NOT
: producing 6-0 results.

: We should share this difficult times with them and try to help them to
: come out of this crisis.

About the only crisis Crafty encounters is lack of power. :) I just call
the power company and ask 'em to fix the problem. It's never had any other
sort of crisis that I had to pull it through. :)

[mclane]

hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

Believe me, it is not funny when chris has damaged his program again,
I am very often very unfriendly to the rest of the world . And why ?
Only because CSTal plays weak.

These downs can be very tough to stand...

[mclane]

drgo...@a.stu.athabascau.ca (Dave Gomboc) wrote:

>>>Why are you always wrong? :)

Mainly it was this sentence that provoked me to give an answer. Sorry.

>>
>>I am not always wrong. I have said Rebel8 will be the leader of the
>>ssdf-list long time before they tested it, long time before any
>>error-margin could have shown this and with only a few samples of
>>games.

>I said in my review (it can be found on the Rebel Home Page near
>yours, Thorsten) that I would be very surprised if Rebel didn't emerge
>at the top of the SSDF list. :-)

Good done Dave. Only blind men or people looking to much to the
NPS-indicator would have overseen Rebel's strength...

>Could you translate your review into English? It looks quite entertaining
>but all I can figure out are the chess moves!

I have tried a translation and I think it was send to CCR.
But this was long time ago...

>Dave Gomboc
>drgo...@a.stu.athabascau.ca

[mclane]

hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
>: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>: >mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
>: >: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>: Now - thats the Bob Hyatt I could live with !!!
>: For me the beauty that lives into the moves, into the sense of them,
>: is much more than the result, if it kills kasparov or Ananse, the
>: result is not my main goal.

>I'm worried, because we might agree on something. However, try this:

!! :-)

>There are two goals in what I do:

>(1) make crafty better, by modifying things that I believe make it better,
>and then determine how I did. This is much easier to test, by simply playing
>a bunch of games against a known quality of opponent, and see how the results
>look. If it's worse, chances are the change was bad. If it wins more, chances
>are the changes are good.

If we would have ICC here , I am sure, chris would also put his CSTal
onto these machines and let it play against the whole world of human
chess players, I told before that we do not have technical problems ,
but the problem that german market is - although know to be a
free-market, controlled by big-state-companies who were subentioned by
the state.
But the monopol is over in 270 days and maybe later we will get lower
telephone bills.
Than we will share any fight with any human beeing on internet ONLINE
!!

>(2) make crafty better by trying to understand what it is not doing well.
>Here I get data by (a) asking; (b) going over (mostly) losses with a fine-
>tooth comb. I try to look at every loss, to see if I can locate a
>"theme". If 5 losses were due to something "similar" then I have something
>to work on that might deliver good results... If the losses are all from
>different problems, I typically "wait" to see which one needs attention
>first. For a long while it was king safety. Then endgames. Then passed
>pawns. Then pawn majorities. then ....

I do the same with the programs I test...

>So I do look beyond the wins and losses. total wins and losses is revealing
>*if* you are talking about a large number of games against known strong
>opponents. Individual games can shed light on weaknesses that need
>attention. I pay attention to both.

Ok, I would also pay attention to LARGE NUMBER of games if I would
always have LARGE number of games.

>however, at the end, the final result it still a desire to play Kasparov
>a match of 10 games and end up 10-0. Not to play great quality chess and
>end up 0-10... the winning and losing has to figure in.

Here we differ, in my opinion before a chess program will win 10-0
against kasparov, the program has to understand chess.
Therefore we need to teach the program about chess.
This is was chris does.
And Mark. And Marty. And Ed. And And And...

A program that is misevaluating a position has few chances, if it has
a good search or not. Because the misevaluation will produce wrong
search trees and wrong conclusions.

>: My way is not valuing the results.
>: I could not do this.
>: That is like valuing Tracy Chapmans work by counting the number of her
>: sold CDs.

>That's actually a workable standard, because most people don't by "crap"
>(or is that spelled "rap"?? I forget) So if an album sells a lot, it is
>probably good music. Yes, I know, the "crap" albums are the exception...
>for reasons I don't understand and don't want to understand.

It is probably. But all this looks to me that you have never read
Pirsigs: Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
There he writes much about objective ways to find out about quality
and quantity=shit (that is sold in high numbers).
E.g. what McDonalds sells is very often sold, although the level of
quality of the products cannot be valued as high as the food I have
eaten at chris' home, cooked by Chris' and his wifes hands, made by
english-henns and ...

Wherever I look I see Hollywood, stupid action-films like Die Hard
(1/2...) and McDonalds, Coca-Cola and other stupid stuff from US.
This does NOT tell us anything about the quality of the products.

>I also rent movies based on the fact that they are the #1 rental because
>generally those are good movies. After I watch it, I can discuss the quality
>or lack thereof. But I have to see it first...

Right. We tasted all your films/movies, all your products.
And despite some rare exceptions (Star Trek, some chess programs e.g.)
the rest decreases in quality from year to year.

[Jean-Peter Fendrich]

brucemo wrote:
>
> mclane wrote:
>
> > But statistics does not proof. It can only give numbers. And you
> > cannot say much about the event what cannot be said WITHOUT
> > statistics.
> >
> > Anything we know from life, can be found out WITHOUT statistics.
> > Statistics is the inkompetent post-game-analysis of people who think
> > they have to explain what is clear to anybody.
>
> It very much depends upon what questions you are asking.
>

> If you want to know which program is likely to find a good positional
> move, or will play beautiful chess, or play interesting chess, or play
> well against random humans, or anything like that, then I'm not sure
> how you'd even approach this with statistics involving games played
> between two chess programs.

In a way it is. Ask 300 people of their opinion about each of
your questions. Then we will get some kind of average opinions.
Just asking mclane (or someone else) will not tell much about it.

>
> If you want to be able to say, "This program will win more than half of
> the games, at this time control, with this hardware, with these opening
> book, with these operators, if I let them play a match of infinite
> duration", the you can say this with great accuracy in some cases. You
> can't say it with perfect accuracy, but in many cases you can say it
> with accuracy > 95%, and that's pretty close.
>

> If two programs are very equally matched, you may have to play a
> tremendous number of games to prove statistically (> 95%) that one will
> beat the other more than half the time. If the match is a huge
> blowout, you can say this with a shorter match.
>

> It is useful to be able to attach a "percentage chance that what I am
> saying is true" to a statement made about two chess programs, and
> statistics let you do this.
>

> bruce

--
J-P Fendrich

[Robert Hyatt]

mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:

: Ok, I would also pay attention to LARGE NUMBER of games if I would

: always have LARGE number of games.

But that's the point. If I'd had this sort of testbed for Cray Blitz,
it would still be playing, and it would still be 200 or more points
stronger than any other program around excepting DB and it's speed.
When Crafty played in Jakarta, it was not a surprise to me that it did
pretty well, simply because it would be called a "robust" program. I
didn't expect any oddball program bugs, I didn't get any, because every
change had had hundreds of games played against it before the tournament
in Jakarta ever started.

There are multiple advantages. (1) lots of games is a good software
engineering idea to test/debug a program. (2) varied opponents tend to
test different parts of the eval to be sure something is not out of line
with other terms. (3) variable time controls exercise the time allocation
code so you are sure you won't run out of time, but you are also sure you
use more time when it is appropriate. With CB, I had no way to do this
sort of testing. Crafty might play poorly at times, due to something I
changed intentionally. But it rarely plays poorly because of programming
bugs that have gone overlooked or undetected for a couple of years because
we only played 5 games total last year...

It really helps...

: >however, at the end, the final result it still a desire to play Kasparov

: >a match of 10 games and end up 10-0. Not to play great quality chess and
: >end up 0-10... the winning and losing has to figure in.

: Here we differ, in my opinion before a chess program will win 10-0
: against kasparov, the program has to understand chess.
: Therefore we need to teach the program about chess.
: This is was chris does.
: And Mark. And Marty. And Ed. And And And...

I don't disagree at all. I've said dozens of times here that even the
best of the current programs are so far behind Kasparov "knowledge-wise"
that it is not funny. Some compensate pretty well with an incredible
search (Deep Blue is an example). But there's still miles to go before
any "silicon" player knows and understands what Kasparov does...

: A program that is misevaluating a position has few chances, if it has

[brucemo]

Ed Schroder wrote:
>
> From: brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com>
>
> > They didn't play at 100:1, you shouldn't forget this. It's as if
> > Genius 5, as far as I know the best at blitz, would beat Rebel 8
> > at 100:1. Say, G5 at 2 seconds and R8 at 200 seconds/move. I'm
> > quite sure that in a 10 games match Genius 5 couldn't win one single
> > game. Rebel 8 did win at 100:1. It must mean something. Better
> > evaluations to begin with. And in this particular game the better
> > evals were more important than a 4 ply deeper search. Only one
> > game, I know, but a very significant game.

I did not write this.

>
> : It is bad for a match of agreed upon duration to be unilaterally
> : terminated after one game.

I did write this.

bruce

[Ed Schroder]

From: brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com>

> : It is bad for a match of agreed upon duration to be unilaterally
> : terminated after one game.

: I did write this.

I know you did Bruce and I have answered you too.

- Ed Schroder -

: bruce

[Robert Hyatt]

Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:

: Bob, sorry, but you'll regret that one ... :))

: Read please the following coming from your brush:
: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:
: [it must have been written on March 26 around 20:30 GMT]

: >Rebel played very well. However, in fairness with this position, I
: >also tested with genius as well, and the funny part is, from the white
: >side, given even fairly short times to move, Rebel, Genius *and* Crafty
: >would follow the same path.

: > White simply ended up with a good position
: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: >after the first 10-15 moves, and the rest of the white plan almost played
: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: >itself.
: ~~~~~

Good position is *not* a winning position. I didn't dislike black's
position. But Crafty and Genius generally agreed with the moves Ed
played after about move 15. I believe that I mentioned this carefully.

In this game, white had quite a few obvious moves, thanks to the way
black played. But I'd play that game again from move 10-15 without
any qualms at all... even if it might lose in the same way, because
the gamewasn't over, *there*..

: Bob, what's thwe ,eaning of the quoted? Talking in chessplaying terms ...?

: I try to translate: Rebel's position was so good that all afterwards he could
: play without greater efforts to the finally winning position after move 33.
: All played itself. Where is Krafti in that scenario? Well, he was without any
: defense ...

not at all. Here's crafty's quick analysis after move 15:

6-> 6.76 -0.087 Nxd5 Kg1 Qd7 fxg6 hxg6 Nc3 Ncb4
7 16.48 -0.117 Nxd5 Kg1 Qb6+ Rf2 Rad8 fxg6 hxg6 Bxd5
Rxd5 d3
7-> 18.22 -0.117 Nxd5 Kg1 Qb6+ Rf2 Rad8 fxg6 hxg6 Bxd5
Rxd5 d3
8 55.86 -0.095 Nxd5 Kg1 Qd6 Rf2 Qd7 fxg6 hxg6 Nc3
Ncb4

+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
8 | *R| | | *Q| *R| | *K| |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
7 | *P| *P| | | | *P| *B| *P|
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
6 | | | *N| | | *N| *P| |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
5 | | | | P | *P| P | | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4 | | | | | | | | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
3 | | P | | | | | P | P |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
2 | | B | P | P | N | | B | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
1 | R | | | Q | | R | | K |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
a b c d e f g h

So No, I don't consider that as won. The position is given above. You
decide. I'd be happy to play either white or black's side in that
position...
: Why all this mess?

: Well, Bob, you must prepare an answer for this question. My guess is as
: follows:
: Because Krafti hadn't this magnificent book till move 30 ...

would have made a difference, but so what? I get winning positions out of
book, I get losing positions out of book, and it learns as it does so.
This position was not bad for Crafty. It played it badly, *as I said*.
Nothing more, nothing less. White has a lot of moves to play that most
good players would find, as would most good programs. Not knocking Rebel,
because it found them too...

: Bob, don't play the clown. You know best what you were talking about with this.

: Don't try to make an easy winner by mating an innocent german after giving him
: too much crack. :))

: I mean you had to explain your liner about moves 10-15 a bit more precisesly,
: ok?

done. see above.

: Don't repeat the song of bad reading of your posts. As concerning

: *misunderstanding* that's a totally different story of course.

: > Of course, as you point out, white had to reach that position,
: >and black had to allow it. Black was thinking a little too far toward
: >the endgame, trying to preserve a winning advantage, but, as a result,
: >didn't make it through the middlegame unscathed.

: Bob, in ten years we will still be amused about this uppercut to your own chin.

I make all sorts of mistakes. I'm generally honest about doing them. Exactly
*who* would I blame a bad move by Crafty on, if not myself? Not anyone else
I can point a finger at here.

: I'm sure about it that you will join us in near future when the whole irony

: will come visible for you ... Not that you are wrong in one single word but
: that you spoke them in the situation you were really mistreated by this Rebel
: beasty. Sorry, not you yourself but your baby blue ... Hi, hi, hi. Ha, ha, ha.

??? Cannot parse above... nor extract your semantic content...

: >: For me at least Rebel won a nice game in a style Kasparov couldn't do better

: >: against Deep Blue. So we had in nucleus what will happen in May. I mean, it
: >: became quite clear that Rebel had enough chess wisdom more than Crafty to
: >: equalize/neutralize the exhorbitant time factor 100.

: >: Don't you agree on this?

It's not quite clear at all. In one game, yes. wait for a few games
in the Hiarcs 6 match. If it continues, you are correct, if it doesn't,
you have to rethink your position.

Rebel did play well. I said that. I still believe the time handicap
is a huge advantage. Let's see some more games before rushing to any
sort of judgement. One game is not enough data...

: Because you are so peaceful let me change my argument: Kasparov wo'nt be

: interested in dubbing Rebel's method against Crafty. In terms of real chess
: it's so average for a champ to play like this. No, GK will try to impute s.th.
: more suspenseful. I don'tr know what. I could demonstrate it afterwards. The
: last time -- for the 20th time -- it was the situation around the Bxh7
: possibility. None had shown some reaction when I pointed out that the two K's
: in the past had several spooky commercils with prgs which are certainly not
: regarded as good as DB of today. Explain me why they did this and we could
: judge about GK's actual attitude for DB. You already ridiculed my amateur
: attempts to look behind the front show but how could we do any research than by
: first speculating/ hypothysing a bit ...?
: You could also add some insight to this from your huge experiences on ICC and
: from several contacts with the GMs. Did none tell you his private view about
: the whole circus? Bill, Roman and others? These guys once could taste of the
: top class players. Either Fischer or Kasparov. Ask them, none would give a dime
: in a bet for DB against GK. Your 4-2's not bad. But ask thwem what Kasparov
: could do if he really wanted ... My opinion: he could always win 6-0. Period. I
: forgot in a tournament game of course. All the funny stuff you follow on ICC is
: rapid maximum. Or am I wrongly informed about that?

We all agree about DB's chances. Doesn't mean we are right, however. That
will be answered soon.

: >: P.S. Remember I gave my betting at the beginning of the game with 6 to 7 points

: >: FOR Rebel as the winner. Maybe that was for a great joy all over this planet
: >: ..

: >: But I did this from my experience with one special single game against a former
: >: version of Crafty. I sent Bob the notation of the game. His main reaction was
: >: not to be understood at the time: He wrote s.th. like the following: you must
: >: play Crafty on a P 200 ...

We'll soon have an answer. If you think rebel would win 6-7 out of 10 with
that time handicap, that's your opinion. It is not mine.

[Cameron Hayne]

In article <5hnbkt$8...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>, hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu
(Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>About the only crisis Crafty encounters is lack of power. :) I just call
>the power company and ask 'em to fix the problem. It's never had any other
>sort of crisis that I had to pull it through. :)

Actually, this just happened to me over the weekend. On Sunday evening
my neighbourhood had a power outage that lasted some hours. I found it
somewhat amusing that I could still play chess on ICC (with my laptop
on battery power) but I had to have a candle to see the keyboard.

--
Cameron Hayne (ha...@crim.ca)
Centre de recherche informatique de Montreal

[Ed Schroder]

From: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt)

Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:

: Bob, sorry, but you'll regret that one ... :))

: Read please the following coming from your brush:
: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:
: [it must have been written on March 26 around 20:30 GMT]

: >Rebel played very well. However, in fairness with this position, I
: >also tested with genius as well, and the funny part is, from the white
: >side, given even fairly short times to move, Rebel, Genius *and* Crafty
: >would follow the same path.

[ snip]

> Good position is *not* a winning position. I didn't dislike black's
> position. But Crafty and Genius generally agreed with the moves Ed
> played after about move 15. I believe that I mentioned this carefully.

I have ignored your Rebel <> Genius claim at first although I found out
there is no such equal moves at all. Maybe now you can tell me:
a.. which Genius version you tested;
b.. at which time control;

I checked the moves from Genius5 with the moves of Rebel8 from move 15
as you suggested till move 35, the critical phase of the game at the
same hardware and same time level conditions as our NPS game.

From these 20 moves my list shows 10 different moves!
That's 50% of the moves including some major key moves of the game.

Rebel8 Genius5
------ -------
16. Kh2 fxg6
17. Be4 Qc1
18. fxg6 Rf2
20. dxc3 Bxc3 (critical move for the game)
22. Qf3 Qg4
23. Rad1 Qg4
24. h4 Qg4 (critical move for the game)
30. Be3 c4
32. Bh7+ Bf5
35. Bc4 Rxd6

Maybe you can post your suggested Rebel8-Genius equalty results in the
same way I did?

- Ed Schroder -

[Robert Hyatt]

Ed Schroder (rebc...@xs4all.nl) wrote:
: From: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt)

: Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:

: : Bob, sorry, but you'll regret that one ... :))

: : Read please the following coming from your brush:
: : ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: : hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:
: : [it must have been written on March 26 around 20:30 GMT]

: : >Rebel played very well. However, in fairness with this position, I
: : >also tested with genius as well, and the funny part is, from the white
: : >side, given even fairly short times to move, Rebel, Genius *and* Crafty
: : >would follow the same path.

: [ snip]

: > Good position is *not* a winning position. I didn't dislike black's

: > position. But Crafty and Genius generally agreed with the moves Ed
: > played after about move 15. I believe that I mentioned this carefully.

: I have ignored your Rebel <> Genius claim at first although I found out

: there is no such equal moves at all. Maybe now you can tell me:
: a.. which Genius version you tested;
: b.. at which time control;

: I checked the moves from Genius5 with the moves of Rebel8 from move 15
: as you suggested till move 35, the critical phase of the game at the
: same hardware and same time level conditions as our NPS game.

: From these 20 moves my list shows 10 different moves!
: That's 50% of the moves including some major key moves of the game.

: Rebel8 Genius5
: ------ -------
: 16. Kh2 fxg6
: 17. Be4 Qc1
: 18. fxg6 Rf2
: 20. dxc3 Bxc3 (critical move for the game)
: 22. Qf3 Qg4
: 23. Rad1 Qg4
: 24. h4 Qg4 (critical move for the game)
: 30. Be3 c4
: 32. Bh7+ Bf5
: 35. Bc4 Rxd6

: Maybe you can post your suggested Rebel8-Genius equalty results in the
: same way I did?

I didn't do it nearly so accurately. I believe I used either genius 2 or
3 on my machine. And I simply fed it positions and if the move you played
would have been played by genius after some relatively short time limit, I
considered it done. I didn't play thru the game at 4-8 minutes per game at
all.

but you have enough data already with crafty, if you look at the log file.
h4 was expected at most depths... ie at move 22, crafty had h4 in the
pv two moves down and pretty well kept it there as the following shows:

<HT>
13 38:34 0.332 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Rbd8 Rf2 f5 Kg1 Kh7
Re2 Ng5 Qxg5 Qc5+ Qe3 Rxd5 Qxc5 Rxc5
13-> 46:25 0.332 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Rbd8 Rf2 f5 Kg1 Kh7
Re2 Ng5 Qxg5 Qc5+ Qe3 Rxd5 Qxc5 Rxc5
14 114:51 0.264 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Kh7 Kg1 f5 h4 Bh6
<HT>
14-> 153:49 0.264 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Kh7 Kg1 f5 h4 Bh6
<HT>

I don't have the log info for move 20 by rebel, but I don't think that is
a critical move. In fact, I like Bxc3 better there, as the bishop stays
on a strong diagonal, without a weak pawn in front of it, and without
giving black that passed epawn. Of course, Bxc3 might have completely
changed the game thanks to my passed pawn scoring... :)

The above moves might well have been different on my older version of
genius. I'm assuming that the ones you omitted were matched?

at move 32, crafty and my genius liked Qh7+ but the score is roughly the same
for Bh7 for crafty...

at move 35 above my old genius liked Bc4 at some point, but I
don't remember which. here's crafty from the log file:

12 15:24 -2.023 Rd6 Bc4 Rd7 Bh6 Rxd5 Bxd5 Rb6 Rf5
a4 Bxg7+ Kxg7 bxa4 f6 Qg4+ Ng5 a5
12-> 27:29 -2.023 Rd6 Bc4 Rd7 Bh6 Rxd5 Bxd5 Rb6 Rf5
a4 Bxg7+ Kxg7 bxa4 f6 Qg4+ Ng5 a5
13 61:18 -2.229 Rd6 Bc4 Rc6 Bh6 Bxh6 Qxh6+ Kg8 Qe3
Rxc4 bxc4 Qxc4 Qxe5 a4 <HT>
13-> 94:05 -2.229 Rd6 Bc4 Rc6 Bh6 Bxh6 Qxh6+ Kg8 Qe3
Rxc4 bxc4 Qxc4 Qxe5 a4 <HT>

I did not intend to imply I thought that Rebel played poorly, or that it
was no better than genius. I was pointing out that Crafty put itself into
a pretty sorry position, all by itself. A position that because of decisions
it made, the opponent didn't have any trouble finding good moves. I don't
think every move rebel made was the best, because if you look at the PV's
from Crafty, you will find at least a couple of places where Crafty saw
rebel winning material and rebel missed the opportunities, although obviously
it still won the game.

I'll try to put together a summary of the game with analysis from the log
file of crafty, and if you post your analysis on your web page, I'll include
pv's from rebel to show what each was seeing.

However, I still don't like dxc3... but that's only my opinion. It could
easily be wrong... That was one significant difference that I noted with
Genius as it was not particularly happy at all when I made it play dc, as
it really wanted to play Bxc3 as Crafty expected. What'd you see that led
you to label this as a "critical move"? Other than the fact that Crafty
became a little hyper about the pawn of course. :)

Bob

: - Ed Schroder -

[brucemo]

Ed Schroder wrote:
>
> From: brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com>
>
> > : It is bad for a match of agreed upon duration to be unilaterally
> > : terminated after one game.
>
> : I did write this.
>
> I know you did Bruce and I have answered you too.

Not complaining about that, mainly I was pointing out the part that was
attributed to me but that which I didn't write.

bruce

[Ed Schroder]

From: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt)

: [ snip]

But you said: "I believe that I mentioned this carefully".

> I believe I used either genius 2 or 3 on my machine. And I simply
> fed it positions and if the move you played would have been played
> by genius after some relatively short time limit, I considered it
> done. I didn't play thru the game at 4-8 minutes per game at all.

I think if you make such a statement you should do it at 4:30 as
the Rebel moves were played on.

: but you have enough data already with crafty, if you look at the

: log file. h4 was expected at most depths... ie at move 22, crafty
: had h4 in the pv two moves down and pretty well kept it there as the
: following shows:
<HT>
: 13 38:34 0.332 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Rbd8 Rf2 f5 Kg1 Kh7
: Re2 Ng5 Qxg5 Qc5+ Qe3 Rxd5 Qxc5 Rxc5
: 13-> 46:25 0.332 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Rbd8 Rf2 f5 Kg1 Kh7
: Re2 Ng5 Qxg5 Qc5+ Qe3 Rxd5 Qxc5 Rxc5
: 14 114:51 0.264 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Kh7 Kg1 f5 h4 Bh6
: <HT>
: 14-> 153:49 0.264 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Kh7 Kg1 f5 h4 Bh6
: <HT>

: I don't have the log info for move 20 by rebel, but I don't think
: that is a critical move. In fact, I like Bxc3 better there, as
: the bishop stays on a strong diagonal, without a weak pawn in front
: of it, and without giving black that passed epawn. Of course, Bxc3
: might have completely changed the game thanks to my passed pawn
: scoring... :)

Yes, 20. dxc3 was a strange move. Looks very anti positional at first
sight. Somebody posted an explanation for that on which I basically
agreed on. Still I preferred 20. Bxc3 too.

: The above moves might well have been different on my older version

: of genius. I'm assuming that the ones you omitted were matched?

Yes.

: at move 32, crafty and my genius liked Qh7+ but the score is roughly

: the same for Bh7 for crafty...

: at move 35 above my old genius liked Bc4 at some point, but I
: don't remember which. here's crafty from the log file:

: 12 15:24 -2.023 Rd6 Bc4 Rd7 Bh6 Rxd5 Bxd5 Rb6 Rf5
: a4 Bxg7+ Kxg7 bxa4 f6 Qg4+ Ng5 a5
: 12-> 27:29 -2.023 Rd6 Bc4 Rd7 Bh6 Rxd5 Bxd5 Rb6 Rf5
: a4 Bxg7+ Kxg7 bxa4 f6 Qg4+ Ng5 a5
: 13 61:18 -2.229 Rd6 Bc4 Rc6 Bh6 Bxh6 Qxh6+ Kg8 Qe3
: Rxc4 bxc4 Qxc4 Qxe5 a4 <HT>
: 13-> 94:05 -2.229 Rd6 Bc4 Rc6 Bh6 Bxh6 Qxh6+ Kg8 Qe3
: Rxc4 bxc4 Qxc4 Qxe5 a4 <HT>

: I did not intend to imply I thought that Rebel played poorly, or
: that it was no better than genius. I was pointing out that Crafty
: put itself into a pretty sorry position, all by itself. A position
: that because of decisions it made, the opponent didn't have any
: trouble finding good moves. I don't think every move rebel made was
: the best, because if you look at the PV's from Crafty, you will find
: at least a couple of places where Crafty saw rebel winning material
: and rebel missed the opportunities, although obviously it still won
: the game.

: I'll try to put together a summary of the game with analysis from
: the log file of crafty, and if you post your analysis on your web
: page, I'll include pv's from rebel to show what each was seeing.

The Rebel analysis is on my home page. Also an analysis by Rebel8 on
the Crafty moves. It would be nice if you do an analysis of move 15-35
with Crafty on 4:30 and see if your original claim is right.

: However, I still don't like dxc3... but that's only my opinion. It

: could easily be wrong... That was one significant difference that
: I noted with Genius as it was not particularly happy at all when I
: made it play dc, as it really wanted to play Bxc3 as Crafty expected.
: What'd you see that led you to label this as a "critical move"?
: Other than the fact that Crafty became a little hyper about the pawn
: of course. :)

I tend to agree with you on 20. dxc3. Wish there were a few IM's or good
chess players here on RGCC who standard could give their opinion about
such doubtful moves. Are there?

I know why Rebel doesn't like to play 20. Bxc3 (20.. f5 21. Bg2 Nd4)
20. dxc3 simply prevents the black knight to move to d4. But the big
question is if that is sufficient to accept the following disadvantages
for white:
- strong black center passed pawn on e5;
- blocked white diagonal Bb2;
- giving up a center pawn;
- allowing a double pawn;
I do not know the answer.

I labeled 20. dxc3 and 24. h4 as "critical moves" because they changed
the game into a complete different direction as both Crafty and Genius5
do not play the 2 moves at 4:30

I compared the moves at 4:30

Rebel8: 20. dxc3 score +0.09
Crafty: 20. Bxc3 score -0.407

Rebel8: 24. h4 score +0.61
Crafty: 24. Qg4 score -0.422

Move 24 is interesting, Rebel and Crafty differ a complete pawn!

I don't think you can say Genius played the same moves as Rebel. The
difference of 50% is simply too high.

I don't know if your claim is true for Crafty. Maybe you can test the
white moves with Crafty at 4:30 and publish the results?

- Ed Schroder -

: Bob

[mclane]

brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote:

>bruce

Hey you two - this above dialogue shows me very typical the cultural
problems in HOW TO HAVE A DISCUSSION WITOUT MISUNDERSTANDINGS between
europeans and americans in a nice way.

We should discuss this in Den Haag, Bruce.

[Rune Djurhuus]

In article <5ht1su$mh1$1...@thor.wirehub.nl>, Ed Schroder <rebc...@xs4all.nl> writes:

> I tend to agree with you on 20. dxc3. Wish there were a few IM's or good
> chess players here on RGCC who standard could give their opinion about
> such doubtful moves. Are there?

20.dxc3 seems strange at first sight, but I think it is quite a clever
move. First of all 20.Bxc3 is solid, but without any prospects: It
seems impossible for White to do anything in the centre as Black has a
firm grip on d4.

After 20.dxc3 White is threatening to get a tremendous bishop on
d5. If White can manage to play Bd5, as in the game, Black would be
tight up defending f7, and that means a big positional
advantage. Therefore I think 20...Qc7 is a mistake. 20...Rde8 seems
better, to fight for the d5-square. Black can answer 21.Qf3 with f5.

> I labeled 20. dxc3 and 24. h4 as "critical moves" because they changed
> the game into a complete different direction as both Crafty and Genius5
> do not play the 2 moves at 4:30

> Move 24 is interesting, Rebel and Crafty differ a complete pawn!

24.h4 seems like a strong attaking move, opening up the Black
kingside. I would have been proud of playing it.

> - Ed Schroder -

Just som human thoughts.

Rune Djurhuus
--
International Grandmaster
URL: http://www.ifi.uio.no/~runed/

[Robert Hyatt]

Ed Schroder (rebc...@xs4all.nl) wrote:

: : Rebel8 Genius5

: : ------ -------
: : 16. Kh2 fxg6
: : 17. Be4 Qc1
: : 18. fxg6 Rf2
: : 20. dxc3 Bxc3 (critical move for the game)
: : 22. Qf3 Qg4
: : 23. Rad1 Qg4
: : 24. h4 Qg4 (critical move for the game)
: : 30. Be3 c4
: : 32. Bh7+ Bf5
: : 35. Bc4 Rxd6

: > I believe I used either genius 2 or 3 on my machine. And I simply

: > fed it positions and if the move you played would have been played
: > by genius after some relatively short time limit, I considered it
: > done. I didn't play thru the game at 4-8 minutes per game at all.

: I think if you make such a statement you should do it at 4:30 as
: the Rebel moves were played on.

Possibly. Howver, if you take my "most" moves were the same, and look at
the "differences" you post. out of a large number of moves, you found 10
that were different if I'm reading correct? The game ended at around move
60 as I recall? and 50 out of 60 is certainly "most"...

: : but you have enough data already with crafty, if you look at the

: : log file. h4 was expected at most depths... ie at move 22, crafty
: : had h4 in the pv two moves down and pretty well kept it there as the
: : following shows:
: <HT>
: : 13 38:34 0.332 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Rbd8 Rf2 f5 Kg1 Kh7
: : Re2 Ng5 Qxg5 Qc5+ Qe3 Rxd5 Qxc5 Rxc5
: : 13-> 46:25 0.332 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Rbd8 Rf2 f5 Kg1 Kh7
: : Re2 Ng5 Qxg5 Qc5+ Qe3 Rxd5 Qxc5 Rxc5
: : 14 114:51 0.264 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Kh7 Kg1 f5 h4 Bh6
: : <HT>
: : 14-> 153:49 0.264 Rb8 Rad1 Ne6 Qe3 Kh7 Kg1 f5 h4 Bh6
: : <HT>

: : I don't have the log info for move 20 by rebel, but I don't think
: : that is a critical move. In fact, I like Bxc3 better there, as
: : the bishop stays on a strong diagonal, without a weak pawn in front
: : of it, and without giving black that passed epawn. Of course, Bxc3
: : might have completely changed the game thanks to my passed pawn
: : scoring... :)

: Yes, 20. dxc3 was a strange move. Looks very anti positional at first
: sight. Somebody posted an explanation for that on which I basically
: agreed on. Still I preferred 20. Bxc3 too.

It has plusses and minuses. I'll pose it to a couple of more GM players I
know just for fun. I hate to bug too many, however. From my personal
perspective, I thought it gave black more counter-play than was necessary,
because the bishop turned into a pawn for several moves, and, to a program
anyway, the pawn on c3 needed some attention since it was undefended.
Could have been a brilliant move however...

: : The above moves might well have been different on my older version

: Yes.

Martin Boriss certainly posts from time to time. And he's quite a good chess
player. Hope he saw my "prod".. :)

: I know why Rebel doesn't like to play 20. Bxc3 (20.. f5 21. Bg2 Nd4)

: 20. dxc3 simply prevents the black knight to move to d4. But the big
: question is if that is sufficient to accept the following disadvantages
: for white:
: - strong black center passed pawn on e5;
: - blocked white diagonal Bb2;
: - giving up a center pawn;
: - allowing a double pawn;
: I do not know the answer.

: I labeled 20. dxc3 and 24. h4 as "critical moves" because they changed
: the game into a complete different direction as both Crafty and Genius5
: do not play the 2 moves at 4:30

one thing I wish I did have is the analysis from one move back. As I recall,
at the normal searches I did here, Crafty was doing to play a rook move that
a couple suggested at move 19 for black. That is likely one turning point in
the game. I'll run the Nxc3 position here to see what it saw and when, as
moving the rook to challenge for the center looked better. More on this later.

: I compared the moves at 4:30

: Rebel8: 20. dxc3 score +0.09
: Crafty: 20. Bxc3 score -0.407

: Rebel8: 24. h4 score +0.61
: Crafty: 24. Qg4 score -0.422

: Move 24 is interesting, Rebel and Crafty differ a complete pawn!

: I don't think you can say Genius played the same moves as Rebel. The
: difference of 50% is simply too high.

: I don't know if your claim is true for Crafty. Maybe you can test the
: white moves with Crafty at 4:30 and publish the results?

: - Ed Schroder -

I'll certainly have it annotate the game at 4:30 for info, yes... and remember,
I did all of the analysis casually. I was really not interested in what Rebel
did, I was interested if any really bad moves showed up for crafty, according
to genius. Genius did not like 19. ... Nxc3 for one. There were others, but
it is *very* difficult to compare them when one is searching so rediculously
deep...

: : Bob

[Robert Hyatt]

Rune Djurhuus (ru...@ifi.uio.no) wrote:

: In article <5ht1su$mh1$1...@thor.wirehub.nl>, Ed Schroder <rebc...@xs4all.nl> writes:

: > I tend to agree with you on 20. dxc3. Wish there were a few IM's or good

: > chess players here on RGCC who standard could give their opinion about
: > such doubtful moves. Are there?

: 20.dxc3 seems strange at first sight, but I think it is quite a clever

: move. First of all 20.Bxc3 is solid, but without any prospects: It
: seems impossible for White to do anything in the centre as Black has a
: firm grip on d4.

: After 20.dxc3 White is threatening to get a tremendous bishop on
: d5. If White can manage to play Bd5, as in the game, Black would be
: tight up defending f7, and that means a big positional
: advantage. Therefore I think 20...Qc7 is a mistake. 20...Rde8 seems
: better, to fight for the d5-square. Black can answer 21.Qf3 with f5.

I believe that Qc7 is one of those moves that came from the last ply
or two. If I recall Ed's web page correctly, at this position, at
fairly deep depths, crafty was planning Rde8, but I'm not certain.
There were a couple of places where the deeper move turned out to be
worse... I'll analyze these positions here and post what/why crafty
changed its mind...

[Rolf Tueschen]

Jean-Peter Fendrich <j...@vd.volvo.se> wrote:

>brucemo wrote:
>>
>> mclane wrote:
>>
>> > But statistics does not proof. It can only give numbers. And you
>> > cannot say much about the event what cannot be said WITHOUT
>> > statistics.
>> >
>> > Anything we know from life, can be found out WITHOUT statistics.
>> > Statistics is the inkompetent post-game-analysis of people who think
>> > they have to explain what is clear to anybody.
>>
>> It very much depends upon what questions you are asking.
>>
>> If you want to know which program is likely to find a good positional
>> move, or will play beautiful chess, or play interesting chess, or play
>> well against random humans, or anything like that, then I'm not sure
>> how you'd even approach this with statistics involving games played
>> between two chess programs.

>In a way it is. Ask 300 people of their opinion about each of
>your questions. Then we will get some kind of average opinions.
>Just asking mclane (or someone else) will not tell much about it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But we're NOT interested in average opinions as industrial products. We want to
know what the experts have to tell us. On the sector of testing mclane is a
good adress. Read his Rebel survey to check this.

Pretending an expert level just by doing some (and more so wrong) statistics is
IMHO nonsense. Trying to overwrite experts with artificialties looks rather
strange.

[Rolf Tueschen]

hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

>Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:

Now without any minor irony, this is all rubbish. Seriously. Problem with
almost all of today's micros is that they all are almost blind against these
typical king attacks. There is no need to demonstrate a certain line by crafty.
King attack will come in one or another form anyhow. Either with f2-f4-f5 or
better by h2-h4-h5. I saw a lot of killers where white played h4 then Nh3!! in
front of the dangerous Rh1. But black was blind for this rook *because* the Nh3
was in front of. Sounds stupid but did work in many Pc-killers I saw.

For todays standard Bruce seems right with his comment of your problems with
the king safety. And this is really the most important problem for all micros
indeed.

If and that is important, if the human opponent had time enough to build up the
attack fitting the concrete details of the actual situation. And here it should
be allowed to add some remarks on the difference between rapids/blitz and
tournament time controls.

Difference between blitz and tournament games
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Long ranged planning and concrete analyzing and DB's chances)

In some comments Bob wrote about the not-opposing goals of blitz and *normal*
games on ICC and similar servers. He wrote about a certain dislike of the GM/IM
players for long tournament games ...

In my opinion this is clearly an indication of the players estimation for the
strength of todays computer opponents - excluded DB of course (?) who is hidden
behinf big walls of silence.

Computer chess blitz is playing the machines at their best possible strength
(compaired with human abilities) and it's sort of gambling. You're well 100% in
it, but afterwards you'll have this very important excuse at hand that all this
is NOT *real* chess at all. The advantage for computers is simply the lack of
human's most prominent quality -- the long ranged planning with considering in
the same time the concrete details of each situation. That's not trivial. Even
for a normal GM it takes some time to build up a plan proven by concrete
analysis of some variations. In blitz human vs machine it's a fight between the
planning in general terms and the more or less shortsighted but exact
calculation. If the human succeeds he can be proud of his superiority of
thought, but in case of loss he can get away with the excuse of this little
oversight -- he surely had omitted with more time ...
Losing in a normal game against a machine always has the bitter taste of
failing in the important human skill of thinking ahead. And don't forget the
injustice which lays in the non-fatigation of the machine. All fitness,
psychological war ingredients are worthless against a robot. If you'll win,
well that's nice, but almost expected. But if you'll lose, well it's a
depressive signal. All understood in *normal* time controls.

So, for me, all these thousands of quickies are more or less worthless
compaired with the real game of chess.

Long range planning WITH considering the concrete detasils of each situation.
That is real chess. And so it comes that Bob made another very important error.
And that's a point even the DB crew never dreamed of yet ...

The human player at least in his best exemplary *version* of an world champion,
is at his best in the 1 (in words one) percent of exceptions each rule/law of
chess has in the reality of the zillions of different concrete situations.
So, we didn't achieve yet to implantate the complet (!) patterns of chess
language (around several ten thousands!) either, nor we didn't even dream of
the surplus implantation of *all* the possible exceptions of each rule ..

Because of this I am concvicted of the ridicule of the DB vs GK match. And
talking of a DB Elo of about 2500 seems to me a sacrilegue. Elo must turn
around in his grave seeing this. An Elo number after 36 games. Or was it 22 or
12? Against payed opponents in show events ...

Coming back to the analysis above, I think Rebel did *play* a very strong
attack which couldn't be *refuted* with a certain move in a certain situation.
Until move 33 the displayed scores were almost ok in Fritz after a short check.

>: Why all this mess?
>: Well, Bob, you must prepare an answer for this question. My guess is as
>: follows:
>: Because Krafti hadn't this magnificent book till move 30 ...

>would have made a difference, but so what? I get winning positions out of
>book, I get losing positions out of book, and it learns as it does so.
>This position was not bad for Crafty. It played it badly, *as I said*.

For me it's contradictional to propose on one side a non bad situation and
badly playin on the other side. For Crafty a situation it plays badly is bad,
no?
And objectively spoken, the situation seems bad for black if black doesn't know
how to play this line. What's the problem to understand this?

>Nothing more, nothing less. White has a lot of moves to play that most
>good players would find, as would most good programs. Not knocking Rebel,
>because it found them too...

Maybe, but we were talking about BLACK, not white.

>: Bob, don't play the clown. You know best what you were talking about with this.
>: Don't try to make an easy winner by mating an innocent german after giving him
>: too much crack. :))

>: I mean you had to explain your liner about moves 10-15 a bit more precisesly,
>: ok?

>done. see above.

No, not at all.

You even complicated. I thought you meant WITH a book you might have omitted
this line with g6. Now you added that you occasionally came out of book with
bad scores. But that you keot on learning ------
Well, taken this for granted and looking at the most natural situation on the
board I ask myself how you will manage this huge problem of learning and
implantating?

The NPS challenge showed the following: In a typical king-attack white is ok
with search ply depth of 8-9 and still wins against a ply depth which is around
4 plies deeper! Ok, it would be fun to watch another game with colours
reverted. That's what going on in the game Hiarcs vs Crafty. We''ll see.

>: Don't repeat the song of bad reading of your posts. As concerning
>: *misunderstanding* that's a totally different story of course.

>: > Of course, as you point out, white had to reach that position,
>: >and black had to allow it. Black was thinking a little too far toward
>: >the endgame, trying to preserve a winning advantage, but, as a result,
>: >didn't make it through the middlegame unscathed.

>: Bob, in ten years we will still be amused about this uppercut to your own chin.

>I make all sorts of mistakes. I'm generally honest about doing them. Exactly
>*who* would I blame a bad move by Crafty on, if not myself? Not anyone else
>I can point a finger at here.

*)

>: I'm sure about it that you will join us in near future when the whole irony
>: will come visible for you ... Not that you are wrong in one single word but
>: that you spoke them in the situation you were really mistreated by this Rebel
>: beasty. Sorry, not you yourself but your baby blue ... Hi, hi, hi. Ha, ha, ha.

>??? Cannot parse above... nor extract your semantic content...

As in the above *) it's simple, no? :)

>: >: For me at least Rebel won a nice game in a style Kasparov couldn't do better
>: >: against Deep Blue. So we had in nucleus what will happen in May. I mean, it
>: >: became quite clear that Rebel had enough chess wisdom more than Crafty to
>: >: equalize/neutralize the exhorbitant time factor 100.

>: >: Don't you agree on this?

>It's not quite clear at all. In one game, yes. wait for a few games
>in the Hiarcs 6 match. If it continues, you are correct, if it doesn't,
>you have to rethink your position.

But the same could never ever happen again ...

>Rebel did play well. I said that. I still believe the time handicap
>is a huge advantage.

But that was my point always!!!!!!!!!!
And still Rebel won.

> Let's see some more games before rushing to any
>sort of judgement. One game is not enough data...

Bob, sorry, we're not the SSDF guys. We could see many many many things
already. And for me the *challenge* was clearly won by Ed. He hadn't to prove
an overall win statistically. One single win of this sort is already sufficient
to make things clear.

Reread what some had written, they never had thought that Rebel would win any
single point. But that is exactly what happened.

snipped

>We'll soon have an answer. If you think rebel would win 6-7 out of 10 with
>that time handicap, that's your opinion. It is not mine.

Yes, you're right. That's really a pity we won't see this happen. :)

But even IF, it wouldn't have proven anything bad for Crafty. Ed saw quickly
enough that he couldn't win against a prg in progress. With this early quick
win he made the contra point to your claim however. And you'll always have the
point to claim a singular exceptional chance event ...

We all know and HOPE that Crafty will be much more stronger in future.

BTW the other main thread about the termination was the biggest thread ever in
rgcc!

[Rolf Tueschen]

mcl...@prima.ruhr.de (mclane) wrote:

>brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote:

>>bruce

-------------------------------------------

mclane, very nice diplomatic action, well done.

But let me add that surely brucemo doesn't deserve this anxious dedication.
Why?

Oh, when I was new here there was a big thread about Jakarta. I talked with Bob
about the famous deathrow delinquents. Bob claimed the usefulness of e.g.
gazolining of these criminals for society receiving at least something back
from them for the sake of mankind ...

My reaction was as follows: Bob, watch out, we, the germans have big experience
in e.g. soaping jews and doing other medical treatments like making lamp
shields out of the skin of dead KZ-people. So pay attention where this could
end.

In this situation of high-leveled debate, this bructe came back from Jakarta.
And not exactly knowing who he was I read for the first time an intervention by
this cowboy. He *informed* me of the need of being very careful with these NS
comparisons. He didn't know me at all.

Oh my god, it took me by surprise. Because at that time I had thought a lot
about this and just had left school. My favorite topic was history, you must
know. And now this cowboy jumped into the ring almost like Lt. Calley at My
Lai. Completely uneducated.

I answered him after another jump of that sort and warned him not to repeat it
a third time ...

But I gave up after event 7 or 12. :) For me he might be a good talented
programmer but he's a proxy politically. Although I'm much younger I dare to
close this case.

The lacking smartness came through again in his last injections about closing a
match after game one ...
I can congratulate ES for letting him run into the empty. But still he's
posting *ok I understood, but still I challenge your decision* ...
How dull.

If I'm getting older I don't want to become like this brute.

mclane, or was it too harsh what I wrote. Please tell me. :)

I forgot to comment your sentence. No, I don't think that smarter Americans do
follow another culture of discussion. But I strongly claim that on both sides
of the ocean you could find these and those ...
So please stop this anti-american propaganda wheel. Thank you.

Rolf <Peaceful> Tueschen

[chrisw]

--
http://www.demon.co.uk/oxford-soft

Robert Hyatt <hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu> wrote in article
<5hu0kh$5...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...

I think you can argue about c3 forever. You can get GM's and IM's to
analyse it; but one thing is for sure, nobody (including Ed) knows why xc3
got played, its just the result of some small evaluation function chunks
coming out for one move rather than the other. This *one* move proves
nothing, maybe Ed's evals are very neat for this position alone, or, if
he's very lucky, for many position; ie. his eval could go one way one time,
and one way the other.

If Rebel8 consistently plays these 'minor changes' moves, then you can
argue that he's got it right - but right now nobody really knows.

Chris Whittington

[Robert Hyatt]

Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:
: hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:

: >Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:

would you like to play white against *me* in this position? I don't
believe your f4-f5 or h4-h5 will do anything.

: For todays standard Bruce seems right with his comment of your problems with

: the king safety. And this is really the most important problem for all micros
: indeed.

: If and that is important, if the human opponent had time enough to build up the
: attack fitting the concrete details of the actual situation. And here it should
: be allowed to add some remarks on the difference between rapids/blitz and
: tournament time controls.

: Difference between blitz and tournament games
: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: (Long ranged planning and concrete analyzing and DB's chances)

: In some comments Bob wrote about the not-opposing goals of blitz and *normal*
: games on ICC and similar servers. He wrote about a certain dislike of the GM/IM
: players for long tournament games ...

: In my opinion this is clearly an indication of the players estimation for the
: strength of todays computer opponents - excluded DB of course (?) who is hidden
: behinf big walls of silence.

don't agree. GM's aren't playing long games on ICC *period*. Not just against
programs, but against anyone. It's too public I believe... and has nothing
to do with disdain for computer opponents at all. It has everything to do
with not revealing too much about themselves in public...

: Computer chess blitz is playing the machines at their best possible strength

: (compaired with human abilities) and it's sort of gambling. You're well 100% in
: it, but afterwards you'll have this very important excuse at hand that all this
: is NOT *real* chess at all. The advantage for computers is simply the lack of
: human's most prominent quality -- the long ranged planning with considering in
: the same time the concrete details of each situation. That's not trivial. Even
: for a normal GM it takes some time to build up a plan proven by concrete
: analysis of some variations. In blitz human vs machine it's a fight between the
: planning in general terms and the more or less shortsighted but exact
: calculation. If the human succeeds he can be proud of his superiority of
: thought, but in case of loss he can get away with the excuse of this little
: oversight -- he surely had omitted with more time ...
: Losing in a normal game against a machine always has the bitter taste of
: failing in the important human skill of thinking ahead. And don't forget the
: injustice which lays in the non-fatigation of the machine. All fitness,
: psychological war ingredients are worthless against a robot. If you'll win,
: well that's nice, but almost expected. But if you'll lose, well it's a
: depressive signal. All understood in *normal* time controls.

: So, for me, all these thousands of quickies are more or less worthless
: compaired with the real game of chess.

Depends. Until you do well at the quickees, you won't do well at the
longer ones (talking about programs.) Once a program is dominating all
humans at quickees, it'll be playing better at longer time controls too.

: Long range planning WITH considering the concrete detasils of each situation.

: That is real chess. And so it comes that Bob made another very important error.
: And that's a point even the DB crew never dreamed of yet ...

: The human player at least in his best exemplary *version* of an world champion,
: is at his best in the 1 (in words one) percent of exceptions each rule/law of
: chess has in the reality of the zillions of different concrete situations.
: So, we didn't achieve yet to implantate the complet (!) patterns of chess
: language (around several ten thousands!) either, nor we didn't even dream of
: the surplus implantation of *all* the possible exceptions of each rule ..

: Because of this I am concvicted of the ridicule of the DB vs GK match. And
: talking of a DB Elo of about 2500 seems to me a sacrilegue. Elo must turn
: around in his grave seeing this. An Elo number after 36 games. Or was it 22 or
: 12? Against payed opponents in show events ...

And where do you stand when a micro says "latest Elo is 2532"???

: Coming back to the analysis above, I think Rebel did *play* a very strong

: attack which couldn't be *refuted* with a certain move in a certain situation.
: Until move 33 the displayed scores were almost ok in Fritz after a short check.

: >: Why all this mess?
: >: Well, Bob, you must prepare an answer for this question. My guess is as
: >: follows:
: >: Because Krafti hadn't this magnificent book till move 30 ...

: >would have made a difference, but so what? I get winning positions out of
: >book, I get losing positions out of book, and it learns as it does so.
: >This position was not bad for Crafty. It played it badly, *as I said*.

: For me it's contradictional to propose on one side a non bad situation and
: badly playin on the other side. For Crafty a situation it plays badly is bad,
: no?

I believe I said that, did I not?

: And objectively spoken, the situation seems bad for black if black doesn't know

: how to play this line. What's the problem to understand this?

: >Nothing more, nothing less. White has a lot of moves to play that most
: >good players would find, as would most good programs. Not knocking Rebel,
: >because it found them too...

: Maybe, but we were talking about BLACK, not white.

I agree. that's why you won't see crafty playing this line normally, because
I've done just like Richard and everyone else, and have given it guidance as to
which lines/plans to follow. Any "dragon-like" opening for black simply invites
a kingside attack. Therefore, as a human I will *never* play a dragon=like
position. Crafty with a book won't either...

: >: Bob, don't play the clown. You know best what you were talking about with this.

: >: Don't try to make an easy winner by mating an innocent german after giving him
: >: too much crack. :))

: >: I mean you had to explain your liner about moves 10-15 a bit more precisesly,
: >: ok?

: >done. see above.

: No, not at all.

: You even complicated. I thought you meant WITH a book you might have omitted
: this line with g6. Now you added that you occasionally came out of book with
: bad scores. But that you keot on learning ------
: Well, taken this for granted and looking at the most natural situation on the
: board I ask myself how you will manage this huge problem of learning and
: implantating?

easy. I play 40,000 games a year. That provides a *lot* of learning. I
have specific "do" and "don't do" openings in start.pgn that avoids most
gross things crafty doesn't understand very well...

: The NPS challenge showed the following: In a typical king-attack white is ok

: *)

In that case, you really don't understand chess nor statistics, and there's
no need in my trying to explain it to you. Why don't you take your 6 nps
machine, and play your favorite program on a P6/200, for 100 games. I'll
bet the P6 will lose one. And that clearly proves that the P6 is a suck
program, right? hmmm...

: Reread what some had written, they never had thought that Rebel would win any

[Robert Hyatt]

Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:
: mcl...@prima.ruhr.de (mclane) wrote:

: >brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote:

: >>bruce

: -------------------------------------------

It seems to me that you are talking about me here, since the last name you
mentioned above was "Bob". However, I don't recall challenging Ed's decision
to stop the match. I don't recall having anything much to say about it at
all in fact, and would suggest a trip to deja news to verify this. I believe
I said I understood the "why" and accepted full responsibility for the auto232
fiasco...

So would you *please* try to get your facts straight, before you start making
the insinuations, innuendoes, and implications? Or else find the above
in something I've posted and re-post it here to prove I have advanced senility
and can't remember anything for more than 2 weeks...

: If I'm getting older I don't want to become like this brute.

you're not old, because as you get older, your imagination gets under
control better and better.

: mclane, or was it too harsh what I wrote. Please tell me. :)

: I forgot to comment your sentence. No, I don't think that smarter Americans do

[mclane]

TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de (Rolf Tueschen) wrote:

>Jean-Peter Fendrich <j...@vd.volvo.se> wrote:

>>brucemo wrote:
>>>
>>> mclane wrote:
>>>
>>> > But statistics does not proof. It can only give numbers. And you
>>> > cannot say much about the event what cannot be said WITHOUT
>>> > statistics.
>>> >
>>> > Anything we know from life, can be found out WITHOUT statistics.
>>> > Statistics is the inkompetent post-game-analysis of people who think
>>> > they have to explain what is clear to anybody.
>>>
>>> It very much depends upon what questions you are asking.
>>>

I have shown some main questions in another thread...

>>> If you want to know which program is likely to find a good positional
>>> move, or will play beautiful chess, or play interesting chess, or play
>>> well against random humans, or anything like that, then I'm not sure
>>> how you'd even approach this with statistics involving games played
>>> between two chess programs.

>>In a way it is. Ask 300 people of their opinion about each of
>>your questions. Then we will get some kind of average opinions.

Democracy is ONE wain to get information.
There are other ways of finding out about things than asking MANY
people about their shallow opinion.

>>Just asking mclane (or someone else) will not tell much about it.

Aeh - ASKING ALL is also not the way of grewing wise.

>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>But we're NOT interested in average opinions as industrial products. We want to
>know what the experts have to tell us. On the sector of testing mclane is a
>good adress. Read his Rebel survey to check this.

Oh sorry. But I don't feel as an expert. I am
hobby-fanatic-computer-chess-freak. You can be EXPERT in any field, if
you do it long enough with emotions and heartbeat.

>Pretending an expert level just by doing some (and more so wrong) statistics is
>IMHO nonsense. Trying to overwrite experts with artificialties looks rather
>strange.

The main strength that qualifies ANY decision-made-data-pool is the
SELECTIVE pruning that separates important from unimportant.

YOU CANNOT FIND A TRUE OR QUALITY DECISION by THINKING about it.
That is an illusion. In fact, unconsciousness/Unterbewusstsein makes
the decision BEFORE logic thinks it decides.

That is the main strength of any human decsion action. e.g. chess.

Since the programs refer to logical rules for making decisions , they
will never learn how to play chess at all. Their are no rules you
could follow.

It is like driving a car. Facts do not help. Theory does not help.
Only fogetting to THINK about driving helps.

[mclane]

>>Hey you two - this above dialogue shows me very typical the cultural
>>problems in HOW TO HAVE A DISCUSSION WITOUT MISUNDERSTANDINGS between
>>europeans and americans in a nice way.

>>We should discuss this in Den Haag, Bruce.

>-------------------------------------------

>mclane, very nice diplomatic action, well done.

I will offer him a beer. I think this is the usual way of doing
sponsoring of computer-chess-programmers...

>But let me add that surely brucemo doesn't deserve this anxious dedication.
>Why?

>Oh, when I was new here there was a big thread about Jakarta. I talked with Bob
>about the famous deathrow delinquents. Bob claimed the usefulness of e.g.
>gazolining of these criminals for society receiving at least something back
>from them for the sake of mankind ...

>My reaction was as follows: Bob, watch out, we, the germans have big experience
>in e.g. soaping jews and doing other medical treatments like making lamp
>shields out of the skin of dead KZ-people. So pay attention where this could
>end.

Oh yes, I remember this historical OFF_TOPIC_DISCUSSION....

>In this situation of high-leveled debate, this bructe came back from Jakarta.
>And not exactly knowing who he was I read for the first time an intervention by
>this cowboy. He *informed* me of the need of being very careful with these NS
>comparisons. He didn't know me at all.

Bruce is american. Point. Maybe other countries are not used in
discussion about this topic. They have forgotten that we germans that
were born AFTER second world war, were born in the unbelievable
situation, that when we grow older and get information about the past,
we feel ashamed. And that, when we visit our gandpa's and grandma's
come into a conflict because the people we love from our youth, were
NAZI's, maybe. Or racistic. And that we NEEEEEEEEED to talk and to
discuss about these topics, without trying to feel cynical or ironical
because: only talking about the things I am ashamed of, can katharsis
the feelings of beeing guilty.
Sorry RT, but for me this is true. It could be totally different for
you. I don't like the germans, of course not THESE NAZI-Germans. But
I still love my grandparents. How does this fit ?
It doesn't.

>Oh my god, it took me by surprise. Because at that time I had thought a lot
>about this and just had left school. My favorite topic was history, you must
>know. And now this cowboy jumped into the ring almost like Lt. Calley at My
>Lai. Completely uneducated.

Again. We have a different cultural and educational background.
I have never realized this so much since we discuss here. I have no
problems with europeans, but when an american is involved, the whole
discussion is different.

>I answered him after another jump of that sort and warned him not to repeat it
>a third time ...

>But I gave up after event 7 or 12. :) For me he might be a good talented
>programmer but he's a proxy politically. Although I'm much younger I dare to
>close this case.

In my opinion bruce is very rationalistic. Normally I do not fit very
good to those people, because I was very rational in my youth and know
from experience that rationalist BELIEVE that they are right, although
they know nothing. Rationalism is a kind of religion, meant for people
who NEED facts not to get crazy about all paradox and unanswerable
questions... rationalist need the clear point-of-view of their idelogy
because they are afraid....

>The lacking smartness came through again in his last injections about closing a
>match after game one ...
>I can congratulate ES for letting him run into the empty. But still he's
>posting *ok I understood, but still I challenge your decision* ...
>How dull.

Ed is very clever, isn't he. Dutch people are good strategists, i
think.

>If I'm getting older I don't want to become like this brute.

BRUTE. I don't understand the meaning of this word in this context
here. Or is it a typing-error and is BRUCE ??

Whatever - bruce is bruce. And I am used to accept that he is the way
he is.

>mclane, or was it too harsh what I wrote. Please tell me. :)

No - this time it was ok. More of these smart , and you will be the
next TD of ICCA :-)

>I forgot to comment your sentence. No, I don't think that smarter Americans do
>follow another culture of discussion. But I strongly claim that on both sides
>of the ocean you could find these and those ...

Ah - yeah. But here we seem to have only these instead of those....

>So please stop this anti-american propaganda wheel. Thank you.

Ok. But it is not ANTI in your sense of using the word. It just that I
feel depressed by seeing that we have conflicts that are a result of
our background instead of having an argument about the topic.

>Rolf <Peaceful> Tueschen

[Jean-Peter Fendrich]

Rolf Tueschen wrote:
>
> Jean-Peter Fendrich <j...@vd.volvo.se> wrote:
>
> >brucemo wrote:
> >>
> >> mclane wrote:
> >>
> >> > But statistics does not proof. It can only give numbers. And you
> >> > cannot say much about the event what cannot be said WITHOUT
> >> > statistics.
> >> >
> >> > Anything we know from life, can be found out WITHOUT statistics.
> >> > Statistics is the inkompetent post-game-analysis of people who think
> >> > they have to explain what is clear to anybody.
> >>
> >> It very much depends upon what questions you are asking.
> >>

> >> If you want to know which program is likely to find a good positional
> >> move, or will play beautiful chess, or play interesting chess, or play
> >> well against random humans, or anything like that, then I'm not sure
> >> how you'd even approach this with statistics involving games played
> >> between two chess programs.
>
> >In a way it is. Ask 300 people of their opinion about each of
> >your questions. Then we will get some kind of average opinions.

> >Just asking mclane (or someone else) will not tell much about it.
>

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> But we're NOT interested in average opinions as industrial products. We want to
> know what the experts have to tell us. On the sector of testing mclane is a
> good adress. Read his Rebel survey to check this.
>

> Pretending an expert level just by doing some (and more so wrong) statistics is
> IMHO nonsense. Trying to overwrite experts with artificialties looks rather
> strange.

Bruce had questions regarding feelings about programs.
Asking a lot of people will give you one view.
Asking some expert will give you one, maybe different, view. Asking two
expert might give you two opposite views. You have to make your own
choices in questions like theese.
I can't see any right or wrong in questions regarding feelings.
Your opinion about a non messurable attribute of a chess program is as
valid as mclane's.

--
J-P Fendrich

[Brian Neenan]

Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Robert Hyatt posted:

>Rolf Tueschen (TUESCHEN.MEDIZ...@t-online.de) wrote:
>: [...]

>: Well, taken this for granted and looking at the most natural
situation on the board I ask myself how you will manage this
huge problem of learning and implantating?
>:
>easy. I play 40,000 games a year. That provides a *lot* of
>learning. I have specific "do" and "don't do" openings in
start.pgn that avoids most gross things crafty doesn't
understand very well...

> [..]

Speaking of things Crafty does not understand very well, I show
below part of a game I lost against Crafty 11.19 (played last
Saturday, 5th April). I lost two pawns in the opening but it
turned out that I (White) had a very strong attack. I messed
up, but subsequent analysis with Crafty and Chess Genius 5
seemed to indicate how the compensation could have been worked.

The play was at the rate of 30 moves in 90 minutes, then
remaining moves in 60 minutes. Crafty grabbed hash memory of 6
& 1 megabytes from Windows 3.11.

1. c4 g6 2. Nf3 Bg7 3. d4 d6 4. e4 Bg4 5. Be3 c5 6. Be2 Qb6
7. e5 Bxf3 8. Bxf3 Qxb2 9. Nd2 cxd4 10. Qa4+ Nd7 11. Rb1 Qc3

Position in EPD format:
r3k1nr/pp1nppbp/3p2p1/4P3/Q1Pp4/2q1BB2/P2N1PPP/1R2K2R w qkK -

[and now:]
12. Bg5 Bxe5 13. O-O h6 14. Bxe7 Nxe7 15. Rxb7 O-O 16. Rxd7
Rae8 17. Ne4 Qb2 18. Rb7 Qxb7 19. Nf6+ Bxf6 20. Bxb7 *

So what we might have here is an illustration of the difficulty
in quantifying the trade-off between material gain and
tactical/positional threat.

Regards. ~~ ~~
~~
~~ ~~