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Subject: Re: Definition of branching factor?

Author: Severi Salminen

Date: 23:54:57 02/03/01

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>It sounds like I can have several null moves going at one time.
>Lets say that its whites move.
>White does a null move, black cannot do a null move because white is doing one.
>White gets to move again, but since black did not do a null move, white can do
>another null move.
>The search goes back to the first ply and Whites score is not >= beta, so it
>continues and makes a move.  Black sees that white is no longer doing a null
>move, so black makes a null move.  At the third ply, white cannot make a null
>move because black is making a null move at the 2nd ply.
>
>Am I way off base here ?

No, you got it totally right. I was also confused at the first time because I
thought that you try only _only_ nullmove at a time - (I wonder how this would
perform?). But you can have _many_ null moves going at the same time. Just find
a way to inform the next ply whether you tried a null move or not. I first made
the mistake _not_ to clear en passant information. This resulted some
interesting positions: 1.e4 NULL 2.fxe3ep. After these moves I had a white pawn
at e3 and e4 and a _black_ pawn at e2! Funny - all because of my makemove().

And BTW you can search using (-beta,-beta+1) instead of (-beta, -alpha) - we
only want to know if the score is higher than beta our beta. If it is below beta
or alpha we don't care (unless for threat extensions...).

Severi



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