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H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 21, 2009 09:50 PM UTC:
I think you misunderstand how engines work. Tree search is simply their way
to make plan. That is by trial and error, discarding what does not work,
rather than by constructive reasoning selectively producing only that which
does work. But the result is exactly the same, and you should not be able
to see the difference by watching it play.

For Chess there are many different engines, with many different
'personalities'. Yet the search algorithm of every engine is almost
exactly te same. It is the evaluation that creates the personality. But the
search is necessary to distill strategic traits from  transient 'noise'
in the evaluation, and thus make the evaluation a meaningful guiding
principle. E.g. like havinga passed Pawn on the 7th rank, (in most cases
very good), which happens to be untenable and will be lost in 2 moves,
making that you are simply a Pawn behind.

If engines storm the opponent's King fortress with Pawns, it is because
their evaluation has some non-linear term in its King Safety, which
penalizes a King as the (say) square of the number of enemy Pawns close to
it. They don't have the slightest idea that a checkmate might likely be
the result. It is the programmer of the evaluation function that new that,
and new that by the time the engine has the Pawns in place, it will likely
see a way to push them that breaks down the opponent's fortress and leads
to mate within its search depth.

The problem with very good engines like Rybka or Fritz is that their
'plans' are completely beyond us mortals, so that we cannot recognize
them as such. While the plans we would make in the same position ar in fact
hopelessly futile attempts that they easily refute and blow to pieces. This
is why it is much more fun to watch games between 'weaker' engines than
Fritz.

Btw, the 3 Alpaca vs 2 Knights match ended in 47.9% after 402 games. This
is really within the margin for equality, so it seem that an Alpaca is
nearly exactly 2/3 of a Knight. (i.e. 215 in Kaufman units, which has
N=325.)

The 2 Guanacos vs 2 Alpacas + Pawn was lost by the Guanacas with only a
37.4% score (434 games). This confirms a Guanaco is worth a lot less than
an Alpaca + 0.5 Pawn, perhaps 235.

I am now doing 3 Guanaco vs 2 Knights and 2 Alpacas vs 2 Llamas (all as
Knight replacements).