Automatic Tuning of a Chess Evaluation Function

I’ve taken a little detour over the past week to look at Population Based Incremental Tuning.  This was something which Thomas Petzke brought to my attention.  You can read his take here:

http://macechess.blogspot.com/2013/03/population-based-incremental-learning.html

It’s an interesting approach.  After some investigation I’ve decide to add some form of automated tuning to Maverick’s chess position evaluation function.  I think PBIL seems to hold some promise.