@ProgrammerAngrim said in #10:
> One is that this is the only non-bad move
This illustrates nicely our point, actually. By your definition, if my opponent trades queens, the obvious recapture is a "good move". Or even worse, by this definition, even any forced move (i.e. the only legal move) is a "good move". Easy to implement, yes. Reasonable? I don't think so.
> The other is that this is a non-obvious good move, defined as a move that was not a top move after 4 ply, but is the best move after 12+ ply.
This is not so obviously flawed but not very useful either. There are moves that any strong player would call good or even brilliant (and far from obvious) that show as best even with calculation 4 plies deep. Or moves that look best 12 plies deep but still turn out to be bad when you look even deeper. As a rule of thumb, if your definition depends on a choice of constants that have to be completely arbitrary and cannot be based on any logical ground (4 and 12 here), it's going to be a problem.
Another important point is that even human players often won't agree if a move is "obvious" or not. Thus trying to find an exact definition or algorithm to determine it is IMHO futile.
> One is that this is the only non-bad move
This illustrates nicely our point, actually. By your definition, if my opponent trades queens, the obvious recapture is a "good move". Or even worse, by this definition, even any forced move (i.e. the only legal move) is a "good move". Easy to implement, yes. Reasonable? I don't think so.
> The other is that this is a non-obvious good move, defined as a move that was not a top move after 4 ply, but is the best move after 12+ ply.
This is not so obviously flawed but not very useful either. There are moves that any strong player would call good or even brilliant (and far from obvious) that show as best even with calculation 4 plies deep. Or moves that look best 12 plies deep but still turn out to be bad when you look even deeper. As a rule of thumb, if your definition depends on a choice of constants that have to be completely arbitrary and cannot be based on any logical ground (4 and 12 here), it's going to be a problem.
Another important point is that even human players often won't agree if a move is "obvious" or not. Thus trying to find an exact definition or algorithm to determine it is IMHO futile.