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Subject: Missing Simple Tactics

Author: Michael Neish

Date: 03:26:34 05/02/00



Hello,

I wonder whether anyone could help me, or offer any suggestions as to the
following little problem.

The program I'm writing needs two ply to see what I think should take only one
ply.

In the position below White wins material by the blindingly obvious Bg5.

[D]6k1/pp1nrppp/5rb1/P2P4/5BP1/5P2/4BK1P/R3R3 b - -

However, if I set my program to look only one ply deep, it doesn't see this
move, and prefers Bb5.  At two ply, though, it sees it all right.  I think one
ply should be enough, as the Qsearch ought to take care of the ensuing
exchanges.  Indeed, other programs I have tried manage to find it easily enough
in one ply.

This might be a trivial position, but if it's taking longer than it should to
see these tactics then I could be wasting plies in my search.

By the way, in case anyone asks, I'm not doing anything unusual in Qsearch.  I
call Eval() first, return if it fails high, otherwise set alpha to the Eval()
score if it's greater than alpha, and then search through the available
captures.

Thanks for your help.

Mike.




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