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Subject: Re: Question about evaluation and branch factor

Author: Anthony Cozzie

Date: 05:42:51 11/21/03

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On November 20, 2003 at 13:18:55, Uri Blass wrote:

>On November 20, 2003 at 12:47:41, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>
>>On November 20, 2003 at 12:28:57, Marcus Prewarski wrote:
>>
>>>I've been completely rewriting the evaluation function of my engine
>>>DrunkenMaster (not a strong one) because I was tired of seeing it make some
>>>really ugly moves and I want to give it better knowledge of king safety and pins
>>>and better passed pawn evals.  When I watch it play 5 minute games against an
>>>earlier version it seems like the evaulation is better overall.  However it
>>>seems like these evaluation changes have made the branch factor a bit worse in
>>>several test postions I have.  And it performs worse in WAC test suites which
>>>seems to agree with my observations.  I would think that improving my evaluation
>>>function would improve the search branch factor if anything.  So my question is
>>>does this mean that my newer evaluation function is actually worse in most cases
>>>than my old one or could it be something else like my move ordering is bad to
>>>begin with?
>>>
>>> -Marcus
>>
>>More eval -> fewer '=' beta cutoffs.  Its just a fact of life :(  IIRC, Tim
>>Foden posted some numbers where material-only GLC outsearched normal GLC by ~4
>>ply.  Of course, it lost all its games.
>>
>>anthony
>
>I do not agree.
>
>Maybe if you compare only material with something more complex you are right but
>I see no reason for it to be the case with piece square table relative to more
>complex evaluation.

that is because you didn't look.  Uri, it is annoying to have to explain myself
in full every post.  But just this once, I'm going to do your thinking for you.

Suppose we are searching a PV node with 10 children to depth 1 with 2 programs,
A and B.  In program A, 4 of the children have duplicate evals, while 6 are
different, and in program B all of the children have different evals.  Let us
assume that the 'best move' is one of the 4 with duplicate evals (40% chance).
Program A will get 3 more beta cutoffs (move - eval - stand pat) whereas program
B will be trying more stuff in Q-search (maybe some checks, futility captures,
etc).

Now, it is also clear that the more eval you have the less chance of getting
child two nodes that have the same value.

>More evaluation does not mean that you are slower in test suites and it means
>that you often solve the test faster because the evaluation can tell you that
>the move is good move even when you do not see that it wins material.
>
>Uri

I never said that.  I said more eval makes your move ordering worse.  That is a
whole different bucket of worms . . .

anthony



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