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H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Apr 22, 2009 08:16 PM UTC:
Well, unless you secretly changed topics, we are not discussing AI here at all. We
were discussing Zillions. And Zillions works exactly as I decribed. Even
Humans think far deeper than 4 ply; without that it is not possible to play
any decent Chess, except perhaps at the level of a 6-year-old.

But my main criticism still stands, and is totally independent of any mode
of move productions: you admire moves that are futile, and call them 'a
plan'. While in fact they are just bad Chess, by an entity that does not
properly know what it is doing. You loath 'bean counters' for no apparent
reason other than that they play good Chess.

Well, for deriving piece values I need Chess of a reasonable quality, and
the better the engine, the faster it can play to deliver that quality. If
Zillions needs 30 min per game to reach the same quality as Fairy-Max has at
1 min per game, a 400-game run that I do in a day with Fairy-Max would take
a month with Zillions. That is not doable, as you need mny such runs to
derive the value of a single piece.

The 3 Guanacas beat 2 Knights by 54.8%. Again spectacularly little better
than 3 Alpacas. The small difference between these pieces continues to
amaze me. I should do more tests with divergent pieces, to see if this is a
general trait of non-capture slider moves.

2 Alpaca vs 2 Llamas ended at 50.6%. I forgot for whom, but that does not
really matter as this is equality to far within the resolution of the
test.

I will stop this testing now for some time, as I have to test the opening
book for my engine HaQiKi D, to get it ready in time for the Computer
Olympiad in Pamplona (May 10-18).