Lastest SF Dev gives over 2.0 (c7 removed)...not as fancy a machine as yours but deep enough on 2 threads.lkaufman wrote: ↑Sun Aug 07, 2022 6:12 am
The first move is a big deal in chess. I would say the "c" pawn is the most neutral one to remove; its removal aids the queen's development (and arguably also the knight's development, since its natural square c6 won't block the "c" pawn if it is not there!), but it does split the remaining pawns into two groups, so I would say it's very close to a pure one pawn loss. So averaging removing the "c2" pawn and the "c7" pawn evals (from the point of view of the superior side) is the most appropriate figure to compare to the ideal value of 1.00 (ideal by the definition in UCI). For Dragon 3.1 on 16 threads searching 30 ply, I get 1.58 and 2.18, averaging 1.88 advantage. For a very recent Stockfish (July 24) doing same, I get 1.68 and 2.74, averaging 2.21. So even dividing by 2 still puts the eval on the high side of the desired 1.0, but close enough, while for Dragon taking 60% would make the evals similar to SF evals divided by 2.
The first move is a big deal...but when you are trying to find an otherwise 'equal' position, removal of 1 pawn from the starting position is clearly the most logical as if you did it in the middle of any game, there are all sorts of other variables to throw into the mix. Even then, pick any pawn and it's always going to be far more than +1 for the benefiting side...and it should be.
Either way, going back to Eduards comment, I really cannot help but think removing a single pawn from most any normal position is likely to show the evaluation for the benefiting side go up '1 point'. Neural Networks 'feel things' simple human eval cannot in any case. I would think for anyone to try and make an argument that removing a pawn should = +1 for the benefiting side, would need to go back to hand crafted evals...bad ones (likely) that cannot see all the extra edge one actually gets from that extra pawn.
But then, chess is hard and those who make these evaluation complaints seem to be (more often than not) people who largely switch off their brains and push engines around with an eye on the numbers vs others doing the same thinking it is chess instead of a modern version of rockem/sockem robots or...whatever one wants to call what they do.
Don't think I have any more to say on this point...and congrats on the continued progress of Dragon! I hope to jump back in once you have made it possible to actually play it where you can set the engine to not 'auto move'...that's too disconcerting and spoils the experience- especially when one starts to get lower on time.