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Subject: Re: Repetition Checks

Author: Gerd Isenberg

Date: 14:34:55 07/30/03

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On July 30, 2003 at 16:39:57, Bas Hamstra wrote:

>On July 30, 2003 at 12:17:36, Gerd Isenberg wrote:
>
>>On July 29, 2003 at 14:34:41, Bas Hamstra wrote:
>>
>>>On July 29, 2003 at 00:16:53, macaroni wrote:
>>>
>>>>I have been having great trouble finding an efficient routine for Repetition
>>>>checks, I can get the zobrist keys of the current line being searched, but what
>>>>is the best (if there is a best) method of comparing them to check for 3 the
>>>>same? it seems crazy to loop through all of them for each one, looking for like
>>>>positions. Is there something really simple and nice i'm completely missing? or
>>>>is that the only way,
>>>>Thanks all :)
>>>
>>>How about this: char RepCheck[64000]. Now you in each position you take the last
>>>16 bits of the hashkey. If RepCheck[Last16] is nonzero, it *might* be a
>>>repetition and you do the extensive check of comparing hashkeys all to the root.
>>>For this to work, you increment RepCheck[Last16]++ in your Make(Move) code.
>>>Decrement it at Unmake(). So now you have 1/64000 th of the cost...
>>>
>>>Bas.
>>
>>Hi Bas,
>>
>>The "Ronald de Man" trick works well,
>>except Last16 becomes a bit larger than 64000 in your sample ;-)
>>May be last13 or last14 with smaller tables is even enough.
>
>Maybe. But as the game proceeds the probability of a "hit" becomes higher and
>higher, even if there was no real repetition at all. Suppose you are at move 30
>in a game and there is no real repetition. What's the probability of NOT getting
>a hit in this case? Probably smaller than you would think, says my gut feeling.
>Like throwing a 16bit dice 60 times in a row, not getting ONCE that number ;-)
>Therefore I prefer to have a not too small table.
>
>Bas.

I see, i checked my code and only use 2^^12 entries, 4 KByte.
May be the reason IsiChess lost to Tao ;-)

First of all i use gameMoveCount50 + 4 <= gameMoveCount of course.
I guess the collision rate is so low, that the table pays clearly off. There are
N entries set in 4K, where N is the number of all reversable (half) moves played
in the game and in current search backward from the current search position, <=
100.

There are still a lot of blanks inside the table. Ok 64K is not so huge today,
but 16 4K pages instead of one, hopefully at least in second level chache - if
you have more of these tables it becomes narrow in cache. Remember the thread
about TLB misses ;-)

I guess in qsearch, after irreversible moves (not in check! - if you do some
quite checks in qsearch), it isn't necessary to increment/decrement the
repetition hash and to look for repetitions anymore.

Gerd



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