Hi,
I have been thinking. Right now one of the great boons about the
engines is how strong they are. Especially interesting is that they evolved
their knowledge by themselves and that way were able go beyond us. The most
frustrating part of it all is that they cannot share this with us in terms we
can really understand, so we are forced to accept they are correct, and then
try to explain it to ourselves. Fine, but it doesnt need to be that way for
everything.
Take cube decisions. There are two aspects that interfere with cube
decisions essentially: positional evaluation (were on our own) and match
score. I see no reason why a program couldnt help out players by explaining
to them these score-related aspects. For example, I played a 5 point match
against someone online. Being the inexperienced player I am, I doubled without
taking the score properly into account. GNU told me my double was a colossal
mistake. Something in the 200 range. I looked at the position and didnt
immediately grasp it all. I understood this was no doubt a factor, but was my
position too weak as well? I set it up as a money game and asked it again.
Now, to not double would have been a serious mistake. In other words, the
match score was the sole reason doubling was such a blunder. I have no problem
with that, but I think GNU could be made to explain these things.
Ex: Doubling here in a Money game
would be correct, but the match score (one could write a generic text for the
different situations) 2-away/4-away means that your opponent will redouble
immediately and the game will be for the match. Your MWC should be
X%
The situations are more than a
few, but there are a few that appear far more often than others, and those
initially could be scripted. In order to not drown the Double analysis window,
a button Explanation could be added should the player want it. In time, more
cases would be covered.
Perhaps the program can never
properly tell me that breaking my anchor is a catastrophe (though I have my
thoughts on this too), but this is outside the domain of purely evaluation
aspects (in other words its weights) and could and should become a part of a
teaching tool IMO.
Any thoughts?
BTW, I said I had my thoughts on
positional explanations too. In most cases, its true there is no way it can
help, but sometimes one sees very clear things in the lists of moves and their
evaluations. For example, I see that my solid move is a blunder of over 100
and placed 4th. Interestingly, every single one of the three first
moves involves hitting a specific blot. It doesnt take Sherlock Holmes to
conclude that NOT hitting is a colossal blunder. Or another slight variation,
one sees that every move involving breaking the anchor leads to an enormous
loss of equity. There are different reasonable candidate moves available, but
breaking the anchor is not one of them. I dont know if it is possible, but
even such light explanations could be of use to players at the lower ranks. If
you dont scrutinize the lists of moves, one could easily miss these common
points.
Albert
Silver