[Scidvspc-devel] Patch: AnalysisEngine based Coach

[C H. M. <han...@gm...>]

Hi,

** Existing Coach logic

The current coach-is-watching feature wrt UCI engines, uses the
opponent engine instance itself as the coach. This is ok if the uci
engine is being driven without any tight depth or time limit in the
play->uci-engine, but otherwise it will tend to give wrong coaching
feedback, bcas its view of the position is limited by the depth/time
limit used to weaken the opponent, if any, inturn weakening the
coaching feedback also.

Also it uses the informant's poor move value itself as the threshold,
thus overloading its use. While many times one may want to set a more
tighter threshold wrt coaching feedback.

** AECoach logic

This avoids the above issues and provides more flexibility

Here in the play->uci dialog a new row is added to allow the user to
select a uci engine of their choice as the coach, as well as configure
it wrt coach-alert-threshold, depth to search and time limit.

Inturn if the player starts the corresponding analysis engine, the
AECoach logic will monitor the game progress and inturn whenever the
player makes a move which worsens the evaluation compared to their
previous move, beyond the specified threshold it will alert the player
to review their move.

Additionally if the player takes time while making their move, such
that AE has reached the specified depth, then the best move identified
at that time and the eval wrt same is used so that if the player makes
the best move it is executed immediately without waiting for the ae to
evaluate the new position. However If the player makes a different
move, then not only is it validated wrt the player's prev move score,
but also against the score for the bestmove identified by engine.

So this logic in general tries to ensure that the player doesnt make a
worse move, while parallely trying to push them towards the best move,
provided the player took sufficient time when deciding their move.

NOTE: My patch doesnt start the user selected AECoach automatically,
the user is required to start the AE.

-- 
Keep ;-)
HanishKVC