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Subject: Re: Hashtable size: diminishing returns?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:39:27 03/31/00

Go up one level in this thread


On March 30, 2000 at 13:51:14, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:

>On March 30, 2000 at 01:37:33, Andrew Dados wrote:
>
>>On March 29, 2000 at 23:50:51, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>>
>>>On March 28, 2000 at 23:30:11, Andrew Dados wrote:
>>>
>[snip]
>>>>>
>>>>>So in the case where there is going to be a fail-low, you think that doing IID
>>>>>will use more time than just searching every move immediately at the required
>>>>>depth?  Why?  (If that's not what you meant, then I misunderstood you.)
>>>>
>>>>That's what I ment, yes. You *have to* search all the moves at that ply to full
>>>>depth anyway, so searching first to depth 1, then 2, etc is not helpful at all
>>>>in FL node. You'll waste all those nodes.
>>>
>>>"not helpful at all"?  IID will give you better move ordering than you could get
>>>statically, which should save you work overall.
>>>
>>
>>Just curious... what 'better move ordering' in FL node? Any move ordering is as
>>good as other there (we will search all moves and all will fail low)... and that
>>was my main point.
>>
>
>If you *know* it is a FL node, you don't need to search at all. ;) In those
>cases where it actually isn't, you need to order your moves to find the
>refutation.


Yes, but at the fail low node itself, move ordering is totally unimportant.

See "An analysis of alpha/beta pruning by Knuth/Moore"  if you search a tree
to depth=N, then throw everything away after isolating some fail-low nodes,
and research the tree to the same depth, with _no_ move ordering at the
fail-low nodes, you will search exactly the same tree.  _exactly_.  Hashing
will modify this a bit for random reasons...  but at a so-called ALL node
(Knuth's terminology) move ordering makes no difference.  At each node _below_
an ALL (fail-low) node, move ordering is _critical_ because there you might get
away with searching just one move, rather than several.




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