p.42 Experience has repeatedly shown that attempting to give the evaluation
function of a full-width program much "chess knowledge" is a difficult and dangerous thing to do... real-world evaluator functions
do not pretend to evaluate positions in enough detail to assign really accurate scores. The objective is to give the program
just enough information so that it can use its tree search to discover the effects of complicated dynamic factors which the
evaluator can't assess, such as the results of combinations.
p.102 I tried to establish some quantifiable guidelines for judging
when an attack would be worth a Pawn. Well, if such laws do exist at all, they eluded my attempt to present them in computer-usable
form.
p.103 One cherished theme of my own chess play is the value of a minor piece (Bishop or Knight) in a specific
position. Computer programs use a fixed value for each piece. In practice, though, Bishops may be "good" and Knights "bad"
(or vice versa) depending on their location and the associated Pawn structure. My initial suggestions on implementing variable
values for the minor pieces were coded by Kathe, but proved to be so time-consuming that the tactical search was crippled.
What good will it do a program to have a sophisticated apprehension of the value of its Bishop if it loses the piece
because it "sees" ahead one less ply [of search depth]?
This dilemma is the key limitation on the amount of "chess knowledge" that a microcomputer
program can have. A more sophisticated evaluation function is also more cumbersome. Tactical search - the "I move here, he
moves there, I move here and zap him" type of thinking - is the backbone of all chess play, human or machine. "Stupid
and fast" has it over "smart and slow": this principle seems to be confirmed by the results of computer chess tournaments.
"Smart and fast" is the ideal, but probably won't be achieved in microcomputers without a hardware breakthrough... maybe,
just maybe, the whole effort to endow machines with something resembling a human chessplayer's intuition is doomed to failure
p.109-110 A key breakthrough still has to be made before chess programs
can break into the top circle... Another possible development could be some conceptual rephrasing of the minimax
search, so that a program does not waste the major portion of its time on variations that don't make chess sense.
Increasing a program's "positional understanding" has
marginally improved the quality of play, and probably will continue to do so... If universal equations "solving" chess exist
at all, it is doubtful that they would be comprehensible either to humans or computers.
p.111 Strategic planning is the Achilles' heel of computer chess.
