Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: More Hash Table Questions

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 10:34:48 01/25/99

Go up one level in this thread


On January 25, 1999 at 12:22:25, KarinsDad wrote:

>On January 24, 1999 at 16:42:03, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>>
>>>Is it OK to start probing the table at the first ply beyond the root?
>>
>>yes, because you now have a move played at the root..  and you can play that
>>if the EXACT score comes up at ply=2
>
>This confuses me (probably since I'm still new to this).
>
>This implies that you do not clear out your hash table immediately after the
>program makes a move (i.e. during your opponent's time). For example:
>


Correct... I only clear it (and then only the score part) if something changes
so drastically at the root that I alter my piece/square tables.  One example is
that after castling, my pawn advance stuff is modified, now that I know where
the king is going to 'live'.

>D  E F   G
> \ /  \ /
>  B    C
>   \  /
>    A
>
>If you make move B, my thought was to remove all nodes C, F, and G assuming no
>transpositions there. If a transposition was found, the count of times found
>would just be decremented.
>
>If you do clear out the hash, then you should not be able to find a
>transposition until ply 4 (i.e. e4 e5 is the same as e3 e6, e4 e5). The
>transposition was not found until a ply 4 search (not a ply 2, that's just the
>first time it was found).
>
>So if you do clear out the hash, then transpositions could not be found until
>ply 4. If you do not clear out the hash, then transpositions could be found at
>ply 1. The strange thing to me here is that if you do not clear out the hash,
>you may find a few transpositions at ply 1 (from 3 ply moves ago), but it would
>seem that this is not worth the effort since you would be saving information in
>your table that is at least 3 ply old (and mostly next to worthless).
>
>I suddenly realized that maybe the phrase "root" meant not the original
>position, but any position passed to the search algorithm. If so, disregard my
>ramblings above.
>



'root' is the initial position... from this position you have to find a move
to play...  which is why I don't probe at ply=1, because I need to search each
move to find which is best, not find that they all fail low or whatever...

But it is a moot point.. probing won't hurt just so you know how to handle the
case where you reach search at ply=1 with alpha and beta set, you do a probe and
get a value < alpha, or > beta before you search anything...




>KarinsDad
>
>[snip]



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.