Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Internal Iterative Deepening (in Crafty)

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:44:26 01/10/99

Go up one level in this thread


On January 10, 1999 at 10:22:04, Steve Maughan wrote:

>On January 10, 1999 at 02:18:42, Larry Griffiths wrote:
>
>>Steve,
>>
>>I used Iterative Deepening for time control.  My program keeps increaseing
>>its max depth and starting another search as long as time remains.
>>max depth and start another search.
>>
>>The other reason I use it is to increase the efficiency of the alpha-beta
>>search.  The principle variation of the last iteration is used as a
>>"Killer heuristic".  The moves for the next iteration are ordered
>>based on the previous iteration.  This tends to increase the number of
>>alpha-beta cutoffs.
>
>Larry,
>
>Yes I have come across Iterative Deepening, the technique I was refering to is
>INTERNAL Iterative Deepening.  In Crafty, when it comes across a node in the
>middle of the search tree that it does not have a hash table value for, it does
>a Depth-2 search to try to find a good move for move ordering.  The benefits are
>like the ones you outlined.  I was somewhat surprised that it was of benefit as
>an internal move ordering technique.  I'll have to write the rest of my Chess
>program before I can test the idea :(
>
>Thanks
>
>Steve Maughan


A subtle point:  it doesn't do "just a depth-2 search"...  because it just
calls Search() recursively with depth-2, but _that_ search will also have no
hash move, so it calls itself with depth-2 again...  what this means is that
I first do only a q-search to find the best capture.  Then I do a 2 ply search
trying the hash move first, but I'll likely find a non-capture is better.  Then
I'll take that non-capture and do a 4-ply search, and so forth...

so it really is like an 'iterated' search rather than just a simple search to
depth-2 and then quit...  thanks to the wonders of recursion.  :)



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.