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Subject: Re: Do programmers mean to the same thing when they say nodes?

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 11:51:04 09/06/99

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On September 06, 1999 at 07:05:03, blass uri wrote:

>I know that nodes in some programs(like Junior) include illegal moves and my
>question is if the same illegal moves are defined as nodes by all the programs.
>
>If the answer is negative then we cannot say that one program is a faster
>searcher only because it searches more nodes per second.
>
>We need a clear definition of nodes to compare.

A node is a position that you generated as part of a tree search, made on your
internal board, and considered to some degree.

It can be illegal, I think, since capture of a king can be regarded as the
ultimate tactical threat, which is detected and the position is rejected on that
basis.

It can be a position that you decide to search more deeply, so perhaps you don't
even do an evaluation.

It can be a position that you reject because of a score stored in the hash
table.

Or it can be a position that you evaluate and decide not to search more deeply.

The simplest way to count them is put "nodes++" at the top of "qsearch" and
"search".

If you do something else that would count these same nodes, that's fine too.

bruce




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