Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Neverending story with incomplete tablebases

Author: Ed Schröder

Date: 06:34:32 08/16/03

Go up one level in this thread


On August 16, 2003 at 09:24:42, Uri Blass wrote:

>On August 16, 2003 at 09:13:25, Ed Schröder wrote:
>
>>On August 16, 2003 at 03:24:47, Johan de Koning wrote:
>>
>>>On August 15, 2003 at 04:03:32, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>>
>>>>On August 15, 2003 at 02:03:28, Johan de Koning wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>The job of an engine is to search a position,
>>>>
>>>>The goal of an engine is to play chess games.
>>>>
>>>>A user may use it to analyze positions. In that case, not being
>>>>able to remember analysis when moving throughout the variations
>>>>is a weakness, not a strength.
>>>>
>>>>>and the result should depend only
>>>>>on that position. Like the power of a car engine should depend only on its RPM,
>>>>>not on how fast the car moves or how fast the car moved 1 minite ago.
>>>>
>>>>Power doesn't mean anything. It's an internal parameter
>>>>that only indirectly relates to real world performance.
>>>>Acceleration or speed does. They do depend on past situations.
>>>>
>>>>>Sticky TT (or reorderd piece lists :-) cause the engine to have a mind of its
>>>>>own. Things with a mind of their own, like cats and (wo)men, are unreliable and
>>>>>don't make a good tool.
>>>>
>>>>You sound like a kid that believes in Santa Claus.
>>>>
>>>>Nondeterminism is something you can live with. Forget about getting
>>>>the engine working on multiprocessor if you don't.
>>>
>>>So far you sound like someone trying to mimic Vincent. :-)
>>>
>>>I listed predictability as the first of 7 reasons to clear the TT. I did not
>>>list any reasons to preserve the TT, though they do exist (else there wouldn't
>>>be any discussion).
>>
>>But he wants to hear the 8th reason :)
>>
>>Here is my guess, you are marking all kind of positions in the HT to extend that
>>position the next time (iteration). It's the reason why you can not afford to
>>have a big HT and why you must clear it, otherwise the tree would explode.
>>
>>Am I close?
>>
>>Ed :)


>I do not understand the reason that you give.
>
>I see no reason that you have to mark all position in the hash tables and
>I see no reason to extend all positions in the hash tables for the next
>iteration.

Singular Extensions comes to mind, you mark a move as singular in the HT and
search it 1 ply deeper the next iteration. There are plenty of other
possibilities, dangerous pins, threats, mate threats, or any other information
you can extract from the search paths.

Ed


>I also do not think that big hash tables influence the extensions decisions
>in a negative way and I guess that it is possible to check it by comparing
>chessmaster with 256 mbytes and chessmaster with smaller hash tables(I will be
>surprised if 256 mbytes make chessmaster significantly slower at 120/40 because
>of extensions).
>
>Uri



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.