Author: Colin Frayn
Date: 02:47:41 04/27/00
Go up one level in this thread
>>>>Some programs can have main line ends with a mate without understanding that it >>>>is a mate(I saw that it happened to Crafty and Junior). >>>> >>>>I think that knowing if the position is checkmate or not checkmate is an >>>>important knowledge. >> >>I agree. My program checks every move it generates to see if it gives >>checkmate, but it does this in a highly optimised way so that it is as fast as >>possible. The time expenditure is extremely small. >> >>In some (rare) positions my program searches considerably faster than, say, >>Crafty because of this. It just seemed to be like an obvious thing to do at the >>time, and seeing as the slowdown was negligible I implemented it. >> >>>>How much time does a chess program need to find if a position is checkmate or >>>>not checkmate? >>> >>>Not a lot of time. But the problem is that a big number (number of leaf >>>positions) times a small number (time to do the checkmate test) turns into a >>>big number >> >>Depends on how small the small number is :) The total time spent in my program >>doing _all_ checkmate tests adds up to less than 2% of the total running time on >>average problems, occasionally much less and rarely more. > >Perhaps because of the way your program has implemented checkmate tests, it has >a special gift for finding them. It certainly finds some that others miss, and >also finds some of them earlier than others do. Yeah, I noticed that one too :) Well... I guess the benefit is only noticeable occasionally and most of the time I get very little improvement from my method. Cheers, Col
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.