Author: Michael Neish
Date: 21:23:30 05/09/00
Hi, I'd like to ask what people think of the depth at which programs seem to search nowadays. I've read some posts and analyses on here that suggest that some commcercial programs habitually search to depth 15 or more in the middlegame, whereas other programs seem to take a long time just to get to depth 10 or 11. Of course there are differences in search speed, but given the exponential nature of the search tree it seems hard for me to believe that these programs really are searching so much deeper than their contemporaries. Are they cheating somehow? Since ply depth is probably a strong selling point, as processor speed is for PCs, there is probably a strong motivation to try to reach further than your contemporaries, at least on the surface. So, are these programmers pruning the trees somehow (apart from the usual techniques talked about here), or otherwise eliminating moves so that the search tree doesn't expand as quickly? If so, isn't this search depth just illusory? Can short-term tactics, well below 15 ply, be missed in this way? Cheers, Mike.
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