Evert wrote:
Beware that finding a drop in strength after an iteration doesn't necessarily mean that it'll keep getting worse: the next iteration might be better again.
I thought a little about it but I decided to go for the easier path. Probably I will try again with a new group of games. The problem is that a single iteration of the +1000 parameters is like 7-8 hours, even in a powerful 6 core cpu.
Evert wrote:
Did you check whether the residual of the evaluation was still getting better?
If you mean the "e" value, yes, it was getting better.
Evert wrote:
If you see that a new set of evaluation parameters doesn't improve the residual it may be worth it to reduce the amount by which the parameters are adjusted.
I was using the minimum amount of increase/reduction for every parameter, 1 or -1.
I can't really tell what that code does (the function names are meaningless to me), perhaps if you can explain more clearly what it's supposed to do...?
Sorry, I went to fast.
Some parameters of the evaluation function are relative to others. For example I diminish the base piece square table value of the knight depending if it's outposted or semioutposted. Or for passed pawns I have 5 different ways to increase/reduce their base value depending on various conditions. I have other similar parameters anywhere also.
Those parameters are not fixed values but they modify the base value by increasing/reducing it proportionally to his current value. So with this function I tuned which proportion was the best one to increase/reduce the value.
An example. Suppose the PST value of a knight is (20 mg, 15 eg), but a pawn can sooner or later menace it. The tuned parameter for this case has the value -7, so following the function, the final value will be:
(20 mg, 15 eg) - ((20 >> 2, 15 >> 2) + (20 >> 3, 15 >> 3)) = (13 mg, 11 eg)
If the PST value of the knight was initially negative, this reduction will not take part.
The tuning process can iterate from -12 to 12 ("increment" is the name of this variable) each parameter of this type. The comments like //12, //40 are examples of which value will be added/subtracted if the entered value (v) was 64.
I have yet to try to increase/reduce proportionally separately the mg/eg part.