Abstract
What exactly is it that gives one player a decisive advantage over the other in an adversarial contest? We have played tens of thousands of simulated chess games to compare how different kinds of advantage contribute to overcoming an opponent. This has allowed us to quantify the effects of search depth, material strength, and tempo on game outcomes. The results indicate that tempo and material are both advantageous, but that the degree of advantage is highly dependent on skill level. Skill level, as reflected by search depth, leverages small inequalities in material or tempo. In addition, searching one move deeper than an otherwise equally matched opponent equates to an advantage of between 85%-98%.
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Smet, P., Calbert, G., Scholz, J., Gossink, D., Kwok, HW., Webb, M. (2003). The Effects of Material, Tempo and Search Depth on Win-Loss Ratios in Chess. In: Gedeon, T.(.D., Fung, L.C.C. (eds) AI 2003: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. AI 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2903. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24581-0_42
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24581-0_42
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