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Subject: re: Interesting Idea To Improve Crafty

Author: Graham Laight

Date: 07:20:34 05/11/00

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On May 11, 2000 at 10:07:56, blass uri wrote:

>On May 11, 2000 at 08:33:26, Mogens Larsen wrote:
>
>>On May 11, 2000 at 05:36:42, blass uri wrote:
>>
>>>I also believe that other beta testers did not think about part of my productive
>>>ideas for chess programs.
>>
>>Out of curiosity, what productive ideas have you been suggesting?
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>Mogens
>
>I will repeat one idea that I posted here:
>
>
>Many programs are null movers and they prune moves when they see no threat.
>
>I found that Crafty could not find some tactics in practical games because it
>pruned threat mate moves.
>
>I suggested that before the decision if to prune by null move to check also if
>there is a mate threat to bigger depth(If it seach d plies for regular threat it
>can search d+1 or d+2 plies for mate threat)
>
>I think this will help crafty to see tactics when there is a mate attacks and I
>think that crafty will not be significantly slower when there is no mate threat
>because checking if there is a d+1 plies mate threat is easier than checking if
>there is a d plies not mate threat).
>
>Crafty can call chest(a free program that is the best mate solver) to check if
>there is a mate threat and chest is a very fast mate solver(it tries to prove
>that there is no mate with the smallest possible tree and it helps it to see
>that there is no mate very fast).
>
>I read that it is a slow searcher and search only 20000 nodes per seconds on
>a slow hardware p166(I am not sure if I am right about the hardware) but it can
>solve 1500 mate in 2 in one second.
>
>
>Crafty on p166 needs significantly more than 1/1500 second in order to search 3
>plys threat when these threats can miss mate in 2 because crafty's evaluation
>also has no idea if the position is mate so it may need more than 2d-1 plies to
>see mate in d threat not only because of null move.
>
>Uri

This is a good idea, but I don't think Bob will go for it.

Firstly, it's difficult to know whether there's a possible mate threat. If there
is, there's a high probability that a chess program would stumble upon it
anyway.

Secondly, I think Bob likes to control everything that's happening so that he
can ensure that it's all done in the minimum amount of time. Having a cuckoo in
the nest doing unpredictable things with unpredictable quantities of resources
is hardly likely to please Bob, from my readings of his postings over the years.

-g



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