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Subject: Re: Speaking of the Thesis by Marcel van Kervinck (hopefully no storms)...

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 15:44:22 09/06/02

Go up one level in this thread


On September 06, 2002 at 16:26:44, Tony Werten wrote:

>On September 06, 2002 at 16:15:25, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On September 06, 2002 at 16:06:43, Tony Werten wrote:
>>
>>>On September 06, 2002 at 16:03:06, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On September 06, 2002 at 15:46:53, Tony Werten wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On September 06, 2002 at 14:45:11, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Did anyone notice his cutoff idea in the evaluation function?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>It seems to me to be a very good idea, and I don't know if others have tried it
>>>>>>out.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Basically, it consists of three modes with two early exits...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>1. If the material + structure score alone is dominant enough, it exits right
>>>>>>away.
>>>>>>2. Otherwise, it processes the piece list.  If that score is dominant, it exits.
>>>>>>3. Otherwise, it does a full board control scan for all 64 squares.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>It is described starting on page 62 under the section "3.3.2 Multi Staged
>>>>>>Design"
>>>>>>He gets roughly 71% evals returning in stage #1, 13% in stage #2 and 7% in stage
>>>>>>#3.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>It seems like it might be a big win to do it that way.
>>>>>
>>>>>It's called lazy eval and is not a good idea. The times it is wrong happen to be
>>>>>the important ones.
>>>>>
>>>>>Tony
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Two things...
>>>>
>>>>First, you _can_ do a lazy eval with zero error.  I did it in Cray Blitz and
>>>>I explained the idea here before...
>>>>
>>>>You can compute the possible "positional error" (the amount the score will
>>>>change max and min) for each type of piece.  When you do a lazy eval, you
>>>>can use this min/max and sum 'em up (or do it incrementally as we did, which
>>>>can be a headache) so that you know the "independent piece max/min scores".
>>>>
>>>>If you lazy eval based on that, you get _zero_ errors because you will _really_
>>>>know that the individual piece scores can't produce a number larger than X or
>>>>smaller than Y, so you can make an informed decision.
>>>>
>>>>I don't do that today because each time you change the eval, you have to
>>>>update those min/max values which is something I would continually forget.
>>>
>>>Yes, correct. But when you get 71% hitrate your bounds are not very wide.
>>>
>>>>
>>>>2.  You can get good results with remembering the min/max positional scores
>>>>during a real game.  yes, the scores will continue to "widen" and reduce lazy
>>>>eval exits, but the error rate is not that bad.  Compared to the cost.
>>>
>>>In XiniX the hitrate drops to <5% quite fast this way. IMO not really worth it.
>>>
>>>Tony
>>
>>
>>I don't see it drop that far, but I don't watch it carefully unless I am
>>suspecting trouble either...  I will take a longer look.
>
>Might be better for other programs i think. My kingsafety is calculated during
>the piece evaluations as is my passed pawn score. ( to name 2 big ones )
>
>Tony


Mine is actually calculated _last_ as I need to know stuff about all the
pieces first.  But I just factor that into the "error window".  The passed
pawn scores and stuff like trapped bishops are done early since they are
big values too.



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