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Subject: Re: Tree Searching help

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:35:22 02/22/00

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On February 21, 2000 at 21:46:09, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On February 21, 2000 at 21:33:23, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On February 21, 2000 at 21:03:19, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>
>>>On February 21, 2000 at 16:52:03, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On February 21, 2000 at 13:33:58, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On February 21, 2000 at 12:16:49, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On February 21, 2000 at 11:37:52, Mark Taylor wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>An idea I had was to have a small incrmental value subtracted from the eval,
>>>>>>>this small increment getting larger the deeper into the tree search the eval was
>>>>>>>returned from. I had already done this for the values WON & LOST, but I
>>>>>>
>>>>>>This is a good idea. However, most chess programs have transposition tables. The
>>>>>>ideas are not compatible, because ttables assume that a position's score is
>>>>>>constant. You will probably want to have ttables instead of your penalty,
>>>>>>because once in a while there are huge benefits to having a ttable.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>What I did in the end I made the first search iteration look at positional eval
>>>>>>>& material eval, then subsequent iterations looked at material eval only - but
>>>>>>>this was really a cop out.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Yeah, I think this just confuses things. A long time ago I think there was a
>>>>>>program that ran on two CPUs. One CPU ran the regular evaluation function and
>>>>>>one was material-only. They checked each other. But programs these days get
>>>>>>along fine without material-only eval.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>-Tom
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>The very old program Tech (I think the author was Gillogly, correct my spelling
>>>>>please, it was back in 1960) did this, but on only one processor I think.
>>>>>
>>>>>It played rather well, but was seriously handicaped by lack of deep positional
>>>>>understanding.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    Christophe
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>No.  Tech was a 1970+ program.
>>>
>>>
>>>In the book "Echecs & Mips" written by Frédéric Louguet I have found: "1960:
>>>Creation of the Tech program, first program able to compute complicated tactical
>>>positions".
>>>
>>>I remember from articles written by David Levy that Tech used a deep tactical
>>>search (whetever deep meant at that time), but that positional evaluation was
>>>applied to the root moves only.
>>>
>>>I think this approach could be used by beginners in chess programming. The
>>>program could be surprisingly strong (compared to beginner's usual programs).
>>>
>>>
>>>    Christophe
>>
>>
>>that is correct.  I thought you were talking about using two processors, one
>>for the tactical search and one for the normal search (ie like Sun Phoenix did).
>
>
>No actually I missed the point in Tom's post. I did not know about Phoenix.
>
>
>
>
>>Tech was all about being fast, at the expense of making gross positional errors
>>deep in the search (if you can call 3-4-5 plies 'deep'. :)
>
>
>Do you remember if he was doing a QSearch, or just used a SEE to terminate the
>search?
>
>
>    Christophe

No I don't, but Jim and I have corresponded regularly over the past 30 years,
and I don't mind asking.  What would be fun would be to see if he still has
source code...  :)

Just to see how it would play on state-of-the-art hardware.



>
>
>
>
>>>>  The program that did two searches was called
>>>>"Phoenix" by Jonathan Schaeffer. He ran a normal search with several
>>>>workstations in parallel, and a "minix" search using several more workstations
>>>>in parallel.  Minix searched deeper looking only for tactical refutations of
>>>>the moves being considered by the normal search.
>>>>
>>>>Tech was a very fast, very "dumb" type technology approach, which is where
>>>>its name came from (tech).  Jim occasionally posts on r.g.c.c and can be
>>>>reached there.



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