4 ms·

question: bad luck in chess? I do not get it. Maybe I'm simplifying, but the program which gets deeper in the movement tree, should always win.

• shadowfox 12y ago
  > but the program which gets deeper in the movement tree, should always win It doesn't always work like that. Usually, since examining, the whole move tree is very expensive, heuristics tend to kick in at various points providing assessments for positions (thus helping to prune the tree). It is quite possible to land in a position where your set of heuristics is not quite right.
• peterfirefly 12y ago
  The decision tree is enormous. One of the ways one can cope with that is to sample it, i.e. use randomness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_tree_search http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_tree_search
• grkvlt 12y ago
  Aside - I'm very surprised that this comment got enough downvotes to gray it out. It's sad that someone asking an honest question (and I had the same thought occur to me as well) about a seemingly strange result loses karma for it, when this sort of debate is what should be being encouraged. Fortunately there are a couple of replies that do explain why randomness and luck are a factor in computer chess programming...