Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:
Why do you need a gigantic undertaking for 2 or 3 elo at most?
Those are your words, but I say there are more than 50 elo in imbalance and piece values, I have absolutely no doubt about that.
Correct. 2-3 elo only. Which is why it is not a priority by any means. 50 elo is simply ridiculous, no doubt about it. You are just naive.
Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:
I congratulate also Joerg for his efforts, but tuned imbalance can not substitute for everything. I repeat it again: you can never do queen vs 3 pieces with the imbalance tables, never. Joerg claimed to have simplified his ad-hoc rule when he improved the imbalance tables, but you now see SF fully does not understand queen vs 3 pieces, so that the improvement went somewhere else. You do not know quite what you are doing with the imbalance tables.
I will let Joerg explain his thoughts on what possibly went wrong there.
Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:
The same is true for merging redundant rook into imbalance: are you sure imbalance now handles that better? You can not in any way, you do not know where the change has gone, besides, removing failed at LTC.
It did not fail. It passed with high probability that it is a 0-elo change. That was the simplification test before SPRT (-3, 1) was introduced.
Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:
I will tell you simply why you can not do queen vs 3 pieces in the imbalance tables, but you will not understand me. Queen imbalances involve imbalances like Q vs R+minor and Q vs 2Rs, which are by far the most frequent ones. It also includes imbalances like Q vs 3 pieces (3 minors, R+2 minors or 2Rs+ minor), which are rare. How are you going to tune Q vs 2Rs and Q vs R+minor and Q vs 3 pieces at the same time with the same parameter values in the same tables, when in Q vs 2Rs or Q vs R+minor you will have to leave all piece values unchanged, while in Q vs 3 pieces the R, B and N value should go up, and very much at that?
Please tell me how, but first think a bit? Simply impossible. When you tune the whole, you will tune for the most frequent case, and that will leave Q vs 3 pieces imbalance unresolved for ever. Do you understand now?
That is why I have been urging and am urging Joerg again to resubmit a corrected Q vs 3 pieces patch to fishtest. You simply must have an ad-hoc rule for Q vs 3 pieces, there is no other way. Besides, imbalance tables and Q vs 3 pieces imbalance are totally unrelated.
From a quick calculation: (Us vs Them) // Correct me if I am wrong
Q vs R+R = -154+274+274 = +394
Q vs R+B = -154+274+141 = +261
Q vs R+N = -154+274-39 = +81
Q vs B+B+N = -154+141+141-39 = +89
Q vs B+N+N = -154+141-39-39 = -91
Obviously these are hypothetical values with no other material on the board. Such endgames are theoretical draws, so they do not matter in this discussion. Most imbalanced positions have other material on the board too (like pawns and other minor pieces) so all those have to be considered too. Tracing which values are being added to what is a pain in the arse, and I don't have the time to do it. In either case, I see no reason how simply tuning the array cannot help. I would like to hear Joerg's thoughts about this. Your thoughts don't matter to me.
Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:
And Arjun, one last thing to you: I tell you again, it is knowledge that scales at longer TC and with bigger hardware. Hardware power increases with each year, what are you going to do at longer TC and huge hardware but calculate more terms? That is the right thing to do, that is why you have much time and big hardware. More knowledge will avoid randomness. If you have few terms, you simply calculate more, or much more, but, please note, random lines. Random lines usually bring you nothing, you need specific lines.
I thought beancounting has already been discarded.
Reiterating the same misconception again and again without proof does not make it right.
And your logic is also flawed. With better hardware, search depth also increases. Adding redundant nonsense does not increase strength. Searching more nodes almost certainly increases strength.