Evaluation Discontinuity

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Evaluation discontinuity occurs when two positions are assessed as markedly different, even though one can be reached from the other by a short sequence of reasonable moves. This usually happens at the transition between different game phases, for example if the program uses a simple boolean switch to decide whether the position should be considered an endgame. This has a detrimental effect on program's playing strength, since at the transition points program begins to search for the ways of switching or not switching between game phases, and not for improving its position.

See also

• Evaluation Philosophy
• Game Phases
• Tapered Eval

Publications

• Hans Berliner (1979). On the Construction of Evaluation Functions for Large Domains. IJCAI 1979, Tokyo, Vol. 1
• Hans Berliner (1980). Backgammon Computer Program Beats World Champion. Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 14, 4. Smoothness

Forum Posts

• Re: Superlinear interpolator: a nice novelity ? by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 21, 2008
• Evaluation discontinuity by Fermin Serrano, CCC, June 01, 2010

External Links

• Discontinuity from Wikipedia
• Classification of discontinuities from Wikipedia
• Smooth function from Wikipedia
• Guru Guru - Electric Junk (1971), YouTube Video

Uli Trepte, Mani Neumeier, Ax Genrich

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