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Subject: Re: Fail high... What's a mother to do? Choosy mothers are said to choose..

Author: Gian-Carlo Pascutto

Date: 14:02:53 05/14/00

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>Which brings up a point...
>I have seen some chess engines do something silly.  The have finished a ply
>(say, for instance, ply 14 side to move) and do a fail high.  Then *instead* of
>choosing the move that failed high, they stick with the one that was
>completed!!! {in this case, the engine might still play axb5 -- though I doubt
>that Amy has this fault}.
>
>Why would anyone want to do that?  It does not make any sense to me.

My program Sjeng being one of those, I can give at least two explanations:

a) It's a misfeature which I am/was too lazy to fix.

b) Because of the goofed up search the program will sometimes discover something
new on the next ply and start failing high on a LOT of moves. If I can't
complete the search in time, I rather trust the last ply's result than
one of the new psuedo-good moves.

--
GCP



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