Oh, and your method is an Hocus Pocus variation I see, although based on what was the second (number) column in my table. Yet we don't agree on the 3rd digit!Sven Schüle wrote:There is also a fourth method by Uri which is described and discussed in the Perft(20) thread.JuLieN wrote:So we have three methods now:
- Monte Carlo,
- EBF,
- Hocus Pocus.
Which one will get the best estimation?
Sven
And Uri's result is even above it.
If, in lack of time to devote to it, I took this as a game, I suspect that the problem is actually very deep and finding satisfactory prediction methods to it might be fruitful in a lot of domains.
Is all this pure chaos? Can it get tamed using statistics? Should we take into account the nature of chess when making our predictions, instead of focusing on pure numbers? What I mean is: we see various components contributing to the branch factor increase: lines openings, piece development, etc... Soon, the exchange of pieces will certainly reduce the average branch factor: my question is "isn't this so chess-specific that it disqualifies any numbers-analysis only method?" Is there a way to develop a better prediction method that would take into account both numbers and the chess game structure?