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Subject: Re: QSearch

Author: Peter Kappler

Date: 22:06:11 08/16/00

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On August 16, 2000 at 23:09:02, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On August 16, 2000 at 19:47:27, Dan Andersson wrote:
>
>>On August 16, 2000 at 19:34:21, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>
>>>On August 16, 2000 at 18:52:03, David Rasmussen wrote:
>>>
>>>>My Qsearch usually takes up 70-80 % of the nodes searched.
>>>>What are the, say, 10 best ideas/techniques to cut this number down?
>>>
>>>a) don't qsearch
>>>
>>>b) use futility pruning
>>>
>>>c) use SEE futility pruning
>>>
>>>d) live with it...qsearch % tends to be high in every chessprogram
>>>
>>>>P.S. I am writing a new chess program from scratch and I'm very much in love
>>>>with the scientific beauty of MTD(f). What are the pratical pros and cons of
>>>>doing MTD(f). What are the pitfalls etc. ?
>>>
>>>It causes trouble with search trics that depend on alpha/beta values.
>>But introduces new tricks. Especially if one uses ETC.
>
>
>Sorry to ask (actually you certainly expect someone will ask), but
>
>What is ETC?
>
>
>    Christophe
>


Enhanced Transposition Cutoffs.

If the current position isn't in the hashtable, you try each legal move in the
hope that one of them will produce a hash hit with a score that can cause a
cutoff.

I think Schaeffer(?) wrote a paper on this...

--Peter




>
>
>>>Its harder to get a PV.
>>Yep.
>>>It's not necessarily faster than PVS.
>>In the best case MTD and PVS will search the same nodes. And if you use ETC I'm
>>almost certain it will search a smaller tree in the average case. ETC will slow
>>search down, but there are ways to alleviate that. F.ex no ETC the last N plies.
>>>Depends more on large hashtables than other methods.
>>Í would say that it suffers badly from to small TTs instead, maybe even
>>benefitting more from large TTs than other methods. (Thats pure speculation)
>>>
>>>>P.P.S. Why is my chess program code so messy?
>>>
>>>Because its a chessprogram.
>>>
>>>--
>>>GCP
>>
>>Regards Dan Andersson



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