Author: martin fierz
Date: 05:42:28 08/12/04
Go up one level in this thread
On August 12, 2004 at 08:38:46, martin fierz wrote:
>On August 12, 2004 at 07:12:08, Tord Romstad wrote:
>
>>On August 12, 2004 at 06:40:48, Ross Boyd wrote:
>>
>>>Be careful with R=3. It has the potential to make your engine go blind. I lost
>>>~50 (!!) elo when using pure R=3 in TRACE. I ran the experiment again two days
>>>ago and it confirmed my previous findings. Currently, pure R=2 works best for
>>>me... fewer OTB blunders.
>>
>>Like virtually everything else in computer chess, this is something which
>>varies a lot between different engines. In my engine pure R=3 works
>>*much* better than R=2, and slighly bettter than the classic adaptive
>>null move pruning technique. Verified null move pruning also didn't
>>work for me. The only improvement I have found over pure R=3 is a scheme
>>were I occasionally use R=2 in positions where horizon effect problems
>>are likely to be a problem (I use the eval to make the decision).
>>
>>Part of the reason that R=3 is best for me could be that my engine doesn't
>>use null moves as much as most other engines. I only do a null move search
>>when I am reasonably sure of a fail-high, but not quite sure enough to
>>prune the whole subtree without search. Null move at all nodes more than
>>doubles my node count, and does not increase the accuracy of my search
>>noticably.
>>
>>Tord
>
>hi tord,
>
>i'm intrigued by your last sentence - that null move at all nodes more than
>doubles your node count! i wonder how this is possible at all? why? if i
>understand what you write you have an oracle which can tell you whether you
>should do a null-move search at a given node or not.
>
>int alphabeta(....)
grrr, hitting tab-return is not such a good idea :-)
let me continue: you have
int alphabeta(...)
{
...
if(null_oracle(position) == NULL_OK)
do_nullmove_search()
...
}
if you remove that null_oracle thing you get twice as many nodes? i don't
understand how that can happen. your null_oracle would basically be telling you
not to do a null move search if it thinks it will fail low anyway. so for all
nodes where you don't have to do a null move search with R=3 you have to do a
normal search. you save yourself searching the R=3 part, but that should be very
small compared to the normal search part, shouldn't it?
what am i missing?
cheers
martin
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