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I apologise for the late reply.
Mathieu you make good point regarding the use of engines.
Maybe ,I should have been more clear as to when I use engines and for what purpose. For endings:
Take the following:
5B2/7p/8/1p6/p5p1/P2k1bP1/5P2/4K3 w - b6
To your and many players eyes this is a draw.
Nevertheless, your average pc will spend an hour or two and give an evaluation of around minus 35 and minus 40 centipawns( a slight advantage to Black)
My point is we can produce cases in favor of each others point. But when a number of plys is to be chosen the number is too large for an average player.
For your case you mention a 5-6 move combo in an endgame. This would need a 13 or 14 ply and the solution would be found. But the problem is to know when this shallow search would be effective.
Mario
Last edited by Mario Moran-Venegas; Tuesday, 2nd September, 2014, 10:03 PM.
Reason: mistakes
Isn't an advantage of "evaluation of around minus 35 and minus 40 centipawns" a draw (agreeing with what a human would see in the position)? One question that must be answered is how big does an advantage have to be to be meaningful (i.e. lead to a conclusive outcome)? I tend to ignore advantage of less than a pawn. At some small level of advantage, isn't it just "noise"?
I think that the analysis done by computers has to be interpreted carefully. Sometimes the computer will find a winning move that requires a long and complicated continuation. I usually look at those sorts of things and say "in your dreams, computer". I'd have to led through the moves step by step to end up at victory. But quite possibly another more skilled player may see a pattern or strategy in the computer's recommendation and for them, the analysis is useful.
The analysis that a computer provides is nowhere near as good as that which a skilled player can offer (especially for weaker players like me -- really strong players may have a hard time finding humans who can provide useful insight). But when a computer is all that you've got, the analysis from a computer can be helpful but needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
Last edited by Steve Karpik; Wednesday, 3rd September, 2014, 11:00 AM.
At some small level of advantage, isn't it just "noise"?
The best way to copy the line and recheck the evaluation of last moves again. Does it change dramatically or not? Move back to check where a mistake happens.
It is necessary to work with an engine not just stare at changing numbers.
I find it quite interesting to notice the difference in evaluation and choices of main continuation while watching the Sinquefield Cup on Chessdom and was wondering if you do stick with Houdini, Komodo or Stockfish or switch from one to another. Right now I'm thinking Stockfish is the most valuable.
The following engine rating site has not added Komodo 8 as yet but did have Komodo 7 (3244) a very solid #3, behind only Stockfish (3285) and Houdini (3276).
The following engine rating site has not added Komodo 8 as yet but did have Komodo 7 (3244) a very solid #3, behind only Stockfish (3285) and Houdini (3276).
KOMODO 8 **for Android only** is available in the Google Play store for $5.29 ($Ca)
That price is hard to beat, but it might be hard to find an Android device with enough horsepower to make proper use of it...
Hmmm... there are android emulators for Windows; now my head hurts.
KOMODO 8 **for Android only** is available in the Google Play store for $5.29 ($Ca)
That price is hard to beat, but it might be hard to find an Android device with enough horsepower to make proper use of it...
Hmmm... there are android emulators for Windows; now my head hurts.
Kerry, I'm sure you'll find this ChessBase piece apposite (:
I have the usual suspicions of Chessbase
(especially since they have been really pushing Komodo 8 lately)
but this seems like a decent enough head to head test.
I apologise for the late reply.
Mathieu you make good point regarding the use of engines.
Maybe ,I should have been more clear as to when I use engines and for what purpose. For endings:
Take the following:
5B2/7p/8/1p6/p5p1/P2k1bP1/5P2/4K3 w - b6
To your and many players eyes this is a draw.
Nevertheless, your average pc will spend an hour or two and give an evaluation of around minus 35 and minus 40 centipawns( a slight advantage to Black)
My point is we can produce cases in favor of each others point. But when a number of plys is to be chosen the number is too large for an average player.
For your case you mention a 5-6 move combo in an endgame. This would need a 13 or 14 ply and the solution would be found. But the problem is to know when this shallow search would be effective.
Mario
Well, yeah, the example you show is a pretty obvious case where the evaluation should be 0.00 but for some reason, it's at a 0.35 advantage for black.
For me, 0.35 is nothing. Especially in the endgame. I simply assume the machine thinks the position is close to equal. I don't assume that the machine is wrong. Actually, in the example you showed, the engine understands that black's pawn and dominating king do not amount to anything significant. Otherwise it would give a -1.3 or something like that.
You could actually make it worse in your example by adding black pawns on e2, b6 and b7. Now the computer will give a good + to black. I have an old version of Houdini and it gives almost +2 advantage to black. The position is still completely drawn. The key, IMO, is to assume that if the eval is stable at +2, it simply means that the engine hasn't found a way to progress. Otherwise, pawns would promote and the eval would quickly get into +10 territory. So even though the +2 is way off, I'm still glad that I can use the computer to verify that black can't progress. This example is fairly trivial, but in some more complicated cases, it can be useful. If in your human reasoning you somehow forget a move that would make black progress, the computer would find it rapidly and the eval would get to +9 or +10.
In a sense, I agree with you that the computer eval cannot be trusted at face value in these cases. The thing, for me, is that the engine is still extremely useful because you can sort of read between the lines and understand if the position is a win or a draw in most cases.
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