4 ms·

Great writeup! One thing I don't understand is why it would be smarter to augment the inputs with some of the missing board information - particularly the avai

• mattnewton 6y ago
  I am not an expert (and don’t have any idea what I am talking about), but wouldn’t this be captured the same way other future positional advantages are when evaluating the next “level” of possible board positions? Ie, the fact that a piece can later give check, or castle, or anything else if you first move it here is a function of that next move’s resulting position score. This network is just to signal to the final search algorithm how good the board looks in a given spot on tree of possible moves.
  • spiantino 6y ago
    Yes, the overall algorithm will do something much more precise and comprehensive, so it's not like this scoring function needs to be perfect. Still, it matters in a quick evaluation so I'm surprised it isn't in there. A few examples come to mind where, for instance, white has a bishop and knight attacking f7 and it's black to move. If black castles nothing interesting happens and white is likely overextended. But if black cannot castle white will win a rook. I can make up a similar situation with en passant, and this does come up, but a lot less frequently. So anyway, surprised you wouldn't toss a few bits in there, at least the 2 for ability to castle by each player.