syzygy wrote:Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:syzygy wrote:Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:My suggestion was not that this will work automatically for Stockfish, but that it is an idea worth trying.
This is what you wrote:
My guess is that engines will not suffer without endgame psqt
Very clearly SF does suffer.
You know very well that between a crude idea and implementation there is a looong way to go. You should adjust some things, draw your conclusions, etc.
Sure, so after setting all values to 0 as per your suggestion we should now adjust each of the values until SF is back at its old level, right?
I suggest instead to just stick to the tried and tested endgame values. Maybe it can help to tweak some of them, but setting them all to 0 and expect that a well-tuned engine such as SF would not suffer is... naive...
Words have literal and deeper meaning within a context.
You should not adjust anything, but you had only to rerun your test with king psqt of all tables switched on.
Aha....
Look, you are simply redefining your requests with every new post. When you wrote the one I replied to, you had not yet thought for a moment about the king psqt. And now you are suddenly pretending that this is what you meant all along.
The results would be very different. Besides, the main idea we wanted to test is which of the 2 tables, the middlegame or the endgame, has bigger impact on strength. I would say the middlegame is much more important.
Here you are again changing your position. Nobody in this thread ever contested that the middlegame psqt values are more important. Your point from the beginning was that the endgame psqt should be removed.
Just for fun I'll quote from an earlier post of yours:
Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:syzygy wrote:
Maybe Luydmil means that the endgame values of the piece square tables should all be set to 0. That would be easy to test. But I highly doubt that this would be better than the (I assume) well-tuned values that SF is using now. One thing is certain: that SF plays the endgame well is in no way evidence that setting the endgame values to 0 would have any benefit.
That was exactly what I was referring to, Ronald.
I think psqt in endgames is fully useless in top engines (but only in top engines, as they have all other things that would allow them play endings without psqt),
except probably some bonus
for minors on the 5th and 6th ranks.
This is pretty precise, but apparently not at all what you meant and not at all how it should have been understood. Duh. How about carefully wording your posts next time? Then you don't have to repeat the nonsensical blabbing about "literal deeper meaning in the context".
So, if there is an agreement about how much more useful middlegame psqt tables are than endgame psqt tables, why did not you point that out at the very beginning. Are you aware of some tests, precise data, or just speculating. I must say that I have never read till now what is the performance difference between middlegame and endgame psqt.
I guess you feel uncomfortable about king psqt, because it is this table that influences endgame most, as well as your provisional results. I guess you might even have some tests ready with only king endgame psqt enabled, but are reluctant to share them. Btw., if you were so sure of the outcome, why did you run the test?
Endgame psqt in endgames with 6 pieces or less is really a waste of resources, for the simple reason that with such a low number of pieces the interaction of the pieces themselves becomes much more important than some general good placements. You need some more endgame-specific knowledge there, rather than general positioning concepts. Thus, as based on chess knowledge, I would say that, apart from king and pawn psqt, other tables are pretty much irrelevant in simpler endgames. If you follow chess knowledge, you should either leave aside the other 4 endgame tables, or simplify them.
Now, the real problem, as Miguel says, is interpolation. But maybe a work-around could be found, for example interpolate only until a certain mimimum material is left, and then stop using the other 4 tables? Why not, if chess knowledge would suggest this is the better way to do it?
Now, I would not focus on your meticulous analysis of my wording, and even less on the judgements you make of me, people understand according to their intellectual level, I can do nothing about that. Some people read between the lines, others split hairs, etc., I do not mind this. What I am concerned is that you lack benevolence, and that is a quality I would appreciate above many others.