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Precision is a murky concept in chess because it is not a solved game. First, if the move doesn’t change the best play result, can it really be called imprecise

Precision is a murky concept in chess because it is not a solved game. First, if the move doesn’t change the best play result, can it really be called imprecise? Only in terms of practical chances. And if we are talking about practical chances, why should we rely on computer-centric evaluation? If a human has to choose between a move that leads to the win but they have to find 40 best moves or they will lose and a move that is a theoretical draw but now the opponent has to find 40 moves or they will lose, what should a human choose? What is even the ACPL of a move from a tablebase? There is no value, it is either a win, a draw or a loss. So while the whole idea behind this exercise is intuitively appealing and certainly captures some sense behind the idea of accuracy, it should be taken with a grain of salt.

thom 5y ago
Yep, agree with this. It was surprising to me to find out how large the error bars were in computer evaluations of their own games. In the last TCEC superfinal, for example, the majority of the draws saw at least one position with an evaluation higher than +/-1.0, and 3 of the 26 decisive games came after a 0.0 evaluation. I assume that margin should be even bigger in human games, so it’s hard to see what there is to learn (outside some fun lines) from looking at these numbers outside of opening prep. As for the tablebase question, it would be nice to see win/forced-draw probabilities from engines instead of the increasingly artificial material evaluation.
Barrin92 5y ago
>Precision is a murky concept in chess because it is not a solved game it's ironically also a murky concept for the opposite reason. In some openings the analysis of GM's goes so deep that they can fairly often play almost exclusively computer-aided prep. There's a big difference between a 40-move game in that kind of theoretical position vs off-beat games. So you might have a very precise, narrow, theoretical repertoire but that's not the same as playing strength because your opponents can prepare. What really matters is more something like precision under uncertainty.

thom 5y ago

Yep, agree with this. It was surprising to me to find out how large the error bars were in computer evaluations of their own games. In the last TCEC superfinal, for example, the majority of the draws saw at least one position with an evaluation higher than +/-1.0, and 3 of the 26 decisive games came after a 0.0 evaluation. I assume that margin should be even bigger in human games, so it’s hard to see what there is to learn (outside some fun lines) from looking at these numbers outside of opening prep. As for the tablebase question, it would be nice to see win/forced-draw probabilities from engines instead of the increasingly artificial material evaluation.

Barrin92 5y ago

>Precision is a murky concept in chess because it is not a solved game it's ironically also a murky concept for the opposite reason. In some openings the analysis of GM's goes so deep that they can fairly often play almost exclusively computer-aided prep. There's a big difference between a 40-move game in that kind of theoretical position vs off-beat games. So you might have a very precise, narrow, theoretical repertoire but that's not the same as playing strength because your opponents can prepare. What really matters is more something like precision under uncertainty.