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Subject: Re: Uniform depth reporting proposal

Author: Andrew Williams

Date: 01:07:38 08/28/00

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On August 28, 2000 at 00:22:15, Will Singleton wrote:

>On August 27, 2000 at 17:55:23, Andrew Williams wrote:
>
>>On August 27, 2000 at 17:41:07, Dan Newman wrote:
>>
>>>On August 27, 2000 at 08:54:51, Brian Richardson wrote:
>>>
>>><snip>
>>>>
>>>>One awkward thing for me right now relates to predicted moves.  Generally, if
>>>>Tinker ponders for longer than the normal next move search time and the
>>>>predicted move is made, then Tinker moves immediately.  Unfortunately, the score
>>>>and PV from the pondering are lost and bogus values are reported from the
>>>>abnormally short search.  This is annoying when reporting, and a real problem
>>>>when going back to do position learning.  I am thinking of just saving the
>>>>pondering search results separately for these cases.  Any other suggestions?
>>>>
>>>
>>>What I do for pondering is just do a normal search with the time limit set
>>>to "infinite".  Then when the opponent's move comes in I either break out of
>>>the ponder search and start a new search (in case his move is different from
>>>the predicted move), or I just set the time limit and continue searching
>>>without breaking out of the ponder search.  If the time has already expired,
>>>the search will immediately terminate as it ordinarily does when it runs out
>>>of time, with the full PV and so forth retained.  Of course the code that
>>>does all this is one of the ugliest parts of my program, very difficult to
>>>debug, and I don't entirely understand it :).
>>>
>>
>>Everything you say here applies equally to my program too.
>
>Ditto for me.  That code took the longest time to get right, and I never want to
>look at it again.
>
>
>>
>>>>The situation is similar but worse when there is only _one_ legal move, which
>>>>Tinker makes immediately.  I was reporting the raw root eval(), but this caused
>>>>Tinker to resign a KNNvK game (which Tinker had seen was drawn according to
>>>>EGTB's).  I suppose EGTBs should be checked too.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Mine does this too.  I end up without any ponder move for the next go, so my
>>>program just sits there waiting...  I plan to add somthing that will find a
>>>ponder move when there is none, but just haven't gotten around to it.
>>>
>>
>>If there's only one legal move, PostModernist just does a depth 4 search,
>>then returns. This way I get something to ponder.
>>
>
>Yeah, I should do that too, would take a minute or so to program.  But I can't
>see it helping that much.

Yes. I've not evaluated it in any way, but I can't imagine that the move I get
is particularly impressive. I just feel better if my program is actually doing
something rather than just sitting there.

Andrew



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