Learn file, opening book and NN are generally the same, it helps to improve the play of the engine.Modern Times wrote: ↑Tue Feb 19, 2019 9:05 pm No learning is allowed during the course of running an engine. Prior fixed learning is allowed. I can't think of any examples at the moment. Any testing an engine author does prior to release is in effect learning.
I guess the exception is if the learning file is essentially an opening book, then that is a problem but things get a bit murky as well. In essence the engine is supposed to do the work and not use pre-prepared moves, except for tablebases as Graham says,
Before we only have learn file (a file that may contain positions that the engine does not understand easily or does not understand at all given more time, like this pos is losing, but engine see it as winning or even or a pos that is winning but see it as losing or even, etc) , and opening book (with best moves and limited to certain plies), and now an NN that just combines the 2 in one file. LZ is even more vicious in using NN, it uses the move probilities in its search (not just from the root position). Given startpos, it already knew that e4, d4, Nf3, c4 are the top moves, if you go a little deeper than startpos as in the case for most common tournament with limited opening book, the traditional engine is sweating searching trying to find the best move, but LZ just query it in NN file and it has all the best moves at that position and beyond.
I thought that traditional engine should be allowed to use a data file (learn file, book file, any file) in a contest where LZ is participating.