Author: Serge Desmarais
Date: 14:45:17 09/27/98
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On September 20, 1998 at 18:47:20, John Coffey wrote: >I found this on http://www.xs4all.nl/~verhelst/chess/search.html ........... > >"Null move heuristic > >The null move heuristic is a method of skipping searches in parts of the tree >where the position is good enoigh. This is tested by doing a null move (i.e. >passing, doing no move at all) and then seraching with reduced depth. If the >result of this is higher than beta, no further search is done; if the result is >lower than beta we do a normal search. > >The null move heuristic has big dangers because it can fail to detect deep >combinations. On the other hand it can save a lot of time by skipping large >parts of the search tree. " > >John Coffey So I assume the "null move technique" was invented at a time when computers were fairly slow and so the programmers had to find some means of bypassing this by all sorts of techniques. Now that computers are faster than "Mach 3", it is no more necessary to take the chance of missing deep combinations? They will reach these with normal search and selective extensions? I had a Super Nine from Fidelity Electronics in the 80's and it needed days to reach a depth of 9-11 plies, even in very simple ending positions! Serge Desmarais
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