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Subject: Re: Simple optimization question

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 05:40:53 01/09/04

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On January 09, 2004 at 07:03:23, martin fierz wrote:

>don't do it! even if this happened to be faster - which i don't think - having
>readable code is much more important IMO. i believe most chess programs are
>limited by bugs in their playing strength, not by speed. 10% more speed is worth
>a handful of elo at best, not spending time on studying obfuscated code and not
>having bugs is worth much more than that!

Yeah, bugs are arguably the most important factor at all.  I found a really
horrible one last night:

In my passed pawn evaluation, I increase the passed pawn bonus considerably
if it has reached the 6th or 7th rank and the static exchange evaluator
decides that the pawn can safely advance.  Or rather, that was what I thought
I did.  It turned out that I did precisely the opposite:  I gave the passed
pawns a bonus for *not* being able to advance.

The really amazing thing is that this bug must have been in my engine for
a really long time (at least half a year, I think), and I haven't even
suspected that something was wrong until now.  I wonder how many points
this bug has cost me in various tournaments ...

Tord




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