On Apr 30, 1:33 pm, "David Kane" wrote:

That alone should provide enough of a question as to the results here. The
fact is that we don't know when the engines will be strong enough to represent
the "truth".

Sure we do. It will happen gradually, as the endgame
table bases grow to include, first, all of the end game, and
later, the late middle game, and so forth.


In theory, the engine being too strong could be a source of error
in the analysis, as much as the engines being too weak could.
For example, the best move leads to a win in 20 moves based on
a complicated calculation that no human considers. The second
best move wins more slowly but in a way that strong GMs might be
able to see.
Player makes the best move (for the wrong reasons) overlooking the
alternate way to win. That's evidence of weaker, not
stronger, play.

Only if you dump understanding/motive into the formula.
As I see it, the way things were done is that every game
was judged, move by move -- not plan by plan. The whole
point was to be as objective as possible.


This happens all of the time if you look at scholastic games. Crafty
sees the win of a rook at 8-ply and deems it superior to winning
a piece at 3-ply. But the 8-ply analysis is essentially irrelevant to the
game because the kids are not able to calculate that deeply.

But you can't determine which is the stronger
player by adjusting to their weaknesses. You
must remain objective, unbiased. (This seems
to be why game results are used, rather than
any voting on the quality of play). No matter
how weak or how strong, we ought to take the
results straight, with no sugar-coating.

If we wish to do a purely subjective analysis, that
is another matter.


I will say that I do not use Crafty for day-to-day analysis so I don't have an
opinion other than that you need to remember in ELO that the difference
between 2500 and 2800 is vast, and the difference between 2800 and ~ 3100 is
as vast. It is not 10% better, it is closer to think of it as TWICE as good.
Or more likely to win MOST of the time. It is a HUGE difference.

Yeah, yeah -- that's what they WANT us to believe!
But we all know that in that game where world champion
Kramnik allowed mate-in-one on himself, not one of us
would have been so daft. (Don't take my word for it -- go
to GetClub and look at my games. Not ONE overlooked
mate on the move.) And in the match where Deeper Blue
defeated GM Kasparov, which ought to have put it in the
vicinity of almost 3100, it still made daft errors, now and
then. One game saw the computer recklessly leaving its
King wide open to a perp. while winning, and another
showed the notorious horizon-effect resulting in the simple
giveaway of a free pawn (and with it, the game).

IMO, in order to more accurately visualize what we
think of as perfect chess, we need to set the bar well
above the 3100 mark -- perhaps 4 or 5 thousand will
do *for now*.

And in terms of ratings, the difference between
2800 and 2500 is 300 points -- precisely the same as
between 1800 and 1500. The real difference here is
not in the vastness of the gap, but in the difficulty of
getting from point A (2500) to point B (2800). It's a
bit like climbing Mt. Everest, whereas going from
1500 to 1800 is more like climbing a tree and then
jumping over to the rooftop while barefoot.

IMO, the authors I saw unwisely sacrificed quality
of analysis for the sake of repeatability, which merits
the term pseudo-science.

-- help bot