"JohnnyT" wrote in message
. ..
I will try not to laugh too hard.

The point of this WHOLE argument was comparing WORLD championship skills
throughout the ages by comparing play to Crafty.

I point out that the two strongest programs can be worlds apart, even by the
magic 100cp measure in the same common positions.

That people on the surface get confused by the huge and substantial difference
between ~3100 and the 2500 quoted for Crafty, and that it is much farther than
they would imagine.

And you state that in this world championship case. The case through the
ages. Is that the software could be too strong, and you use scholastics to
try and prove that.

I just can't give it to you here. You might have an argument is some other
argument with a different set of facts. But it just has nothing to say here.

You seem to misunderstand what is being said. I didn't
say that 12-ply was too strong, but that the notion that
human strength correlates with deeper analysis is something
that should be proved, not asserted.

As to whether 12-ply + quiescence analysis was sufficient
to give meaningful results, the authors have addressed this
point, though not fully. (They're certainly more credible than
historical ELO, in any event.) One thing they did was to
show that analyzing the games of stronger programs
gave small errors - smaller than those of the humans. However,
there are certainly things they could have done but didn't: showing
results for plies less than 12, doing some analyses at higher ply,
showing that the analysis gives sensible answers for weaker players
whose ratings are known to a high degree of accuracy. There is
only a brief discussion of the correlation of the selected measure
of move quality with results, but that is really *the* key
connection that has to be established.

An interesting first step.



David Kane wrote:
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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.

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.

\