When will the chess programmers write an engine that plans ?

[Uri Blass]

I think both of you are wrong.

Chess is not 99% calculation but it is also not 99% intuition.
things go together during a chess game.
Intuition tell you about moves to look at them but you need to calculate and
I believe that most of the time humans are thinking during a chess game is about calculating lines.

In bullet you have no time to do a long calculation but even in bullet games humans calculate and sometimes do not play the first move that they think to play.

Intuition help you to guess correctly the right line without calculation in most of the cases but you need to calculate to compare with other options.

Intuition also can help you to choose the other lines to search and the other lines to search do not have to be what you guess is second best or third best move.

You may analyze some sacrifice that is probably a losing move but you guess there is a probablity of 10% that it is a winning move and not analyze a different non losing move that you are sure not to be the best move but is probably better than the sacrifice that you guess it is a losing move.

[BrendanJNorman]

I think both of you are wrong.

I believe that most of the time humans are thinking during a chess game is about calculating lines.

Intuition help you to guess correctly the right line without calculation in most of the cases... (snip)

You say we are both wrong and then go on to basically agree with both of us, whilst also seemingly contradicting yourself in the one post.

Too many 'know-alls' on TalkChess...probably myself included.

People want desperately to be right without even thinking about what the other side is really saying.

Oh well...

[BrendanJNorman]

Nope, it's not that one!

It would have been very cool if the uly account was taken by someone with 2400, it would have blown you away. But alas, you'll continue to live in ignorance...

If you're saying you gained 800 Elo in one year, yet you aren't willing to prove it, your story is paper-thin bro.

This is clear as day.

Nobody who made such an improvement would be keeping their new account a big secret.

Odds are the Uly account is indeed your new one.

But whatever, let's drop this nonsense, I'm tired of this thread.

[mclane]

So it should be possible to make an engine that defines a plan. Like a human is doing it.
I was asked WHY the need for this.

This is strange. Why NOT is IMO the better question.

We are so much satisfied with almost infinite resources solve all our needs concerning hardware and bandwidth that we do not put in question that there could be a better way of doing a good chess program then stockfish / Komodo .

An engine that plans and uses the resources in a more strategic way.
An intelligent engine, not an engine with an intelligent search alone.

[JohnW]

So it should be possible to make an engine that defines a plan. Like a human is doing it.
I was asked WHY the need for this.

This is strange. Why NOT is IMO the better question.

For me, I would never notice the difference how the engine was playing so why invest the time in trying to make an engine play like a human?

If you had to randomly play 5 chess engines online, Lc0, Fat Fritz, Houdini 6, Stockfish 11 and Komodo 13.3 and at some point play Magnus Carlsen could you identify which opponent you were playing if you weren't told and if they used a plan or not? I know I couldn't, all I would know is that they played by the same rules, exploited my weaknesses, saw things I didn't etc and I lost soundly.

[jp]

There is no "strategy" in computer calculation.

Depends on your definition of "strategy". It's like saying a calculator isn't doing math. We can't even hold this conversation without putting quotes around the word.

That's a statement all mathematically trained people would agree with.

[Ras]

So it should be possible to make an engine that defines a plan. Like a human is doing it.
I was asked WHY the need for this.

This is strange. Why NOT is IMO the better question.

Why not? Because the human way has proven to be inferior, that's why. It's just like asking whether a GM should take advice from a club level player.
Now don't come up with Leela, that has just as little to do with retrograd, goal-oriented planning as alpha-beta.

[jp]

Humans have transported their human chess thinking into the programs.
The evaluation and search ideas are, in fact, human thinking.
<snip> and just about everything else a GM does.
Sure, it is just calculation, but that is also true when a GM does it,

This is not what a GM or any human does. No human sits there adding up lots of different terms (multiplied by awkward coefficients like 0.38526) to get a number, etc. The closest a human gets to that is counting pieces and assigning values to them to see who's ahead on material.

Have you ever read correspondence champion Hans Berliner's book?
That is exactly what he did.

Over the board?? No human has ever memorised lots of long equations and then sat at the board calculating them with mental arithmetic to "play" chess. Of course, in correspondence chess, you can manually play like a computer program if you want. Not over the board.

[Uri Blass]

I think both of you are wrong.

I believe that most of the time humans are thinking during a chess game is about calculating lines.

Intuition help you to guess correctly the right line without calculation in most of the cases... (snip)

You say we are both wrong and then go on to basically agree with both of us, whilst also seemingly contradicting yourself in the one post.

Too many 'know-alls' on TalkChess...probably myself included.

People want desperately to be right without even thinking about what the other side is really saying.

Oh well...

I do not see that I agree with both of you or that I contradict myself.

I will try to explain myself better.

Chess has 2 main elements:
1)Calculating lines like
if I play A1 then if the opponent play B1 then I play C1.
If I play A1 then if the opponent play B2 then I play C2
if I play A2 then if the opponent....

Calculating lines can include also a null move to see the threat of the opponent after he played a move.

2)Choosing A1,A2,B1,C1,B2,C2 correctly.

All the if then thinking is based on calculation
Choosing the right A1,A2,... is also part of the calculation but this calculation is based on intuition.
The process to get A1,A2,... can be also based on plans that are not specific moves that they calculate but I do not think that this is what chess players do most of the time during a chess game.

In order to get A1,A2 chess players may look at the board to look what they can play when after looking at some options they see a move that they like based on intuition to continue to search it.

[jp]

Chess is not 99% calculation but it is also not 99% intuition.
things go together during a chess game.
Intuition tell you about moves to look at them but you need to calculate and
I believe that most of the time humans are thinking during a chess game is about calculating lines.

First, they have to make clear what quantity this "99%" refers to, e.g. importance, time, ...

If it's time, humans do spend the most time OTB calculating. They can't do much else! OTB, you can't spend more time and be more intuitive from that time spent, but you can spend more time and calculate more.