Author: David Rasmussen
Date: 00:27:45 07/31/02
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On July 30, 2002 at 22:43:36, James Swafford wrote: > >Hey everyone. I'm at an AAAI conference in Edmonton. It's ironic (to me) >that it's been mentioned here recently that Edmonton is a hive of computer >chess enthusiasts. I don't know if that's true (what's a "hive"? :-), but >there are certainly a few... > >Now to my question. I asked Jonathon Schaeffer today (who is a really >nice guy, IMO) some questions about his experience with TD learning >algorithms. He's (co?)published a paper entitled (something like) >"Temporal Difference Learning in High Performance Game Playing." I >thought the title was a bit misleading, because he focused on checkers. >Checkers programs have much smaller evaluation fuctions than chess >programs, obviously. I asked him if he thought the TDLeaf(Lambda) >algorithm had potential in high calibre chess. (Yes, yes, I know >all about Knightcap... but that wasn't quite "high" calibre.) >He responded with a very enthusiastic "yes". He said "I'll never manually >tune another evaluation function again." > >A natural follow up question (which I also asked) is -- then why isn't >everyone doing it?? I don't _believe_ (and maybe I'm wrong about this) >that any top ranked chess programs use it. His response was simply: >"There's a separation between academia and industry." Schaeffer stated >that perhaps the programmers of top chess programs don't believe in >the potential of temporal difference algorithms in the chess domain. >Or, perhaps, they don't want to put the effort into them. > >I believe Crafty is the strongest program in academia now. If not, >certainly among the strongest. So, Bob -- have you looked at TDLeaf >and found it wanting? It's interesting (and perplexing) to me that >paper after paper praises the potential of TDLeaf, but it's _yet_ to >be used in the high end programs. Knightcap was strong, but it's >definitely not in the top tier. > >Maybe Tridgell/Baxter quit to soon, and Knightcap really could've been >a top tier program. Or maybe the reason nobody is using TD is because >it's impractical for the large number of parameters required to be >competitive in chess. Or maybe Schaeffer was right, and the commercial >guys just aren't taking TD seriously. > >Thoughts? > I can only say that I have thought about adding this to Chezzz for a long time, but haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Now Chezzz certainly isn't high calibre, but I'm sure that, given the patterns that I have decided to score in Chezzz, that the actual parameters of the values could be "better". I wouldn't be surprised to see a 100 point rating increase. Also, it would make it a lot simpler to try new patterns. /David
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