
Sorting Out Chess Endgames  - wglb
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/sorting-out-chess-endgames/
======
pavs
(most) Chess engines without end-game database will play horrible endgame to
the extend that a lowly IM can beat the strongest chess engine on the best
consumer hardware. At least this was still true last time I was keeping tabs
on Computer Chess scene. But with 4-5-6 pieces endgame its not only perfect
but it also effects game quality in the middle-games, where most of the games
are decided between human-comp games.

Nowadays, Computer Chess scene is not as exciting as it was 10 years ago (not
because of Deep-blue). Now it has come to a stage that it is less about
knowledge algorithm tweaking and more about, fine-tuning and narrowing down
opening books to few sets where a particular engine is strong at and use
extensive positional and book learning from previous games on those or similar
lines of moves and win games.

Now when you (or GMs) play against a computer engine, you are not as much
playing against an engine, but playing against a huge database that has been
fine-tuned over 100,000s of games.

This is why no chess engine author will agree to an official tournament games
against a top GM, without opening-book, EGTB, pos-learning, book-learning.

~~~
jacquesm
I played chess a lot when I was younger and enjoyed it a lot. Then I joined a
chess club. Biggest mistake I ever made. Everybody was _cramming_ openings
instead of playing the game themselves.

It really was terribly boring. My strategy for dealing with this was to open
with a really bad but non-standard move.

This led to an immediate abandoning of all studied openings by the opponent
and usually that led to a relatively quick win because they spent so much time
on openings that they forgot how to play. Funny that.

Of course, against a really good player that will just get you slaughtered but
the people that rely on knowing tons of openings to gain a favourable position
in the mid game will fail miserably.

I quit because of that, the fact that in order to be competitive I'd have to
cram openings too instead of being able to simply play and hone your skill
against the wits of the opponent in front of you, instead of the dead corpses
of all the GMs before whose games they studied.

I really don't want to play Caro-Kann all over again, I'd like to play my own
games.

~~~
plinkplonk
So here is a question for HN. What is a good boardgame which has

(1) rich tactics (2) does not need "memorizing openings" type efforts to be
good at or where such strategies don't work. (3) is easy to set up and play
(4) has some online community

I don't pay chess these days for much the same reasons as jacquesm. Miniature
wargames are fun but a bear to setup and tear down. Most popular boardgames
aren't very rich tactically, mostly dependent on luck/die rolls etc.

I guess Go would be a good choice but I can't get anyone to play with here
and/or teach me some interesting tactics :-|. I know the rules but don't quite
"get" it yet.

~~~
trevelyan
Chinese chess is fantastic. It's strategically rich, but much harder to screw
yourself in the opening than with regular chess. It's also different enough to
be delightful to learn for people who already enjoy chess. Two examples that
really charmed me:

1\. There is a jumping piece which attacks by leaping OVER pieces and landing
on whichever piece is on the far side. It's possible to defend against this
piece by moving other pieces into and out of the path between it and it's
target, effectively redirecting the attack.

2\. Kings cannot face each other on the board, or leave a very small 3x3
section of their territory. This complicates endgame, but makes your king more
powerful in locking off the options of your opponent.

------
Tichy
"It is a bit funny to recall we paid millions of dollars for this amount of
memory, when today you can buy it for tens of dollars—and then put it in your
pocket."

I wonder how much research could easily be delayed a couple of years until it
becomes cheaper to carry out. Was it so important to do that experiment back
then?

"Hector, always logical, said he never used the machine, but he knew they ran
“hot”—they were known to have cooling problems. So he kept his on all the
time, and used it like a space heater."

Again, it seems as if responsible use of tax payer money was not really a
concern at that place...

~~~
pgbovine
_I wonder how much research could easily be delayed a couple of years until it
becomes cheaper to carry out. Was it so important to do that experiment back
then?_

one of the goals of academic research is to take high risks (and costs) to
explore possibilities for the future (looking forward 5, 10, even 20 years).
if people only invested in 'affordable' research that had direct practical
applications within a 1 or 2-year window, then the likelihood of 'game-
changing' breakthroughs appearing would be much lower.

~~~
dmfdmf
I have no problem with high-risk, long-range research projects as long as they
are funded voluntarily and no fraud or misrepresentation is involved in
getting the funding. You seem to be forgetting that the tax money is take by
threat of force.

~~~
jacquesm
> You seem to be forgetting that the tax money is take by threat of force.

That's a fairly extremist position, there are lots of people that would
voluntarily give a portion of their income up for taxes if it would lead to a
better society.

I'm one of those, and I'm fairly happy to give up my 40+% in return for a
relatively safe society, subsidized health care and reasonably good public
roads and free education, as well as a catchnet for people that are down on
their luck, even if I personally probably have a bit less expendable income
because of that because I produce more that goes in to the system than I
consume. But maybe next week I'll have a car accident and a half a million
dollar bill will result and I will still have a house to go back to.

Now I realize that not all of that money is spent wisely, and maybe we could
make things more efficient, but societies cost money to operate, and societies
that are 'social' (as opposed to socialist, it seems to be a common mistake to
think of them as identical) cost a bit more.

~~~
dmfdmf
There must be _some_ level at which you would object, no? On what grounds do
you object when the percentage becomes 50%, 80% or even 100%? You've already
conceded the principle and a slave is still a slave regardless if he
cooperates with his master. Moreover, nothing I said implies that roads,
education, medical services or even charity would not be funded -- in fact you
proved my point, these things would be funded _voluntarily_ precisely because
many people (myself included) value them. Funding these things by force is
immoral. If you think my position is extreme, try not paying your taxes for a
few years and learn what the "threat of force" really means to your own
freedom and right to property.

~~~
raganwald
Aah, Churchill's old insult: "Madam, would you sleep with me for a million
pounds?"

"Umm, well, I suppose so."

"Her's a tenner, lift your skirt."

"What do you take me for?"

"We have already settled the question of what you are, now we are haggling
over the price."

Makes for a humorous story, but it's a terrible reduction ad absurdum
argument. The fact that I am prepared to give up x percent of my income in
exchange for a given set of benefits that have value to me says nothing about
how I would feel giving up 2x or 3x percent of my income for some possibly
different set of benefits.

Speaking as an Ontarian, I'd be horrified if a political offered to cut my
taxes in half and give me the "freedom" to choose my own health care in the
"free market."

That doesn't make me a slave, it makes me someone who pools certain funds in a
coöperative manner. If you want the same argument back at you, try dismantling
your army and giving every citizen the right to defend themselves from foreign
aggression, buying their weaponry and training on the free market.

Choosing to voluntarily pool some portion of your income with other citizens
to fund a common defense is not slavery either. It's another kind of freedom.

