Re: brute force and knowledge

[johnc@xxxxxxxxx (John Clarke)]

Hi

> There have been a number of studies to how humans search. It appears
> that the difference between professional players and strong amateur players
> is not a huge search. In contradiction, some professional players see
> very little. The main difference is however the knowledge professional players
> use to look right away to the right position, so the right move gets
> chosen nearly directly, without massive parallel search.
> 
> See already old studies from De Groot and others.

I'm sorry if I've been expressing myself badly, but this is exactly what I
mean.  The professionals aren't finding the good moves by magic.  Their
subconscious is suggesting the best moves which are then consciously
evaluated.

The brain isn't doing a lot of serial (eg. tree search) computation - since
pros can play fast, so it must be a big parallel evaluation.

You don't see the parallel search because it is subconscious.  That's why the
pro's find it hard to say what made the move the best.  The search is almost
certainly some kind of pattern matching since that's what we excel at.

Regards
John Clarke
johnc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx