hgm wrote:Sven Schüle wrote:You may argue that king safety, for instance, should be handled differently since in practical games there is typically one moment where both kings can stop to hide behind their pawns, e.g. after exchanging queens or one pair of rooks, and start to move towards the center. But testing will most probably confirm that tapered eval is superior even in this case.
Why would you argue such a thing? Isn't it obvious that moving the King out of its shelter is more dangerous when the opponent has two Rooks plus a Bishop, than when he just has two Rooks? Which makes it again more dangerous than when he has just a Rook and a Bishop?
It is obvious from a chess programming viewpoint but not always from the viewpoint of an average club chess player who has learned to "activate the king in the endgame".
hgm wrote:You either leave the shelter or not. But you have to weigh the urgency/benefits against the danger, and the larger the danger, the more compelling (in terms of impending loss when you don't) the reason has to be for leaving it.
You know that I know that. No need to explain it to me.
hgm wrote:So I think that the explanation of abrupt score jumps is plain nonsense.
I did not intend to favor abrupt score jumps over tapered eval. Maybe I did not express well what I meant. But please read what I wrote, especially the last sentence of my post you quoted:
Sven Schüle wrote:But testing will most probably confirm that tapered eval is superior even in this case.
I tried to explain to Syed what the advantage of tapered eval is, and that it is better than abrupt score jumps even in case of king safety evaluation, despite what human chess players might expect.