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Subject: Re: Checks in qsearch

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 05:29:03 06/22/00

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On June 22, 2000 at 07:55:53, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On June 21, 2000 at 11:12:23, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On June 21, 2000 at 11:03:42, David Rasmussen wrote:
>>
>>>I find that a lot of the games that my program loses, it loses because it
>>>doesn't search checking moves in qsearch.
>>>Anyway, how do people do that most effectively? I would like not to generate all
>>>moves in the qsearch (just the captures), but then I will miss the noncapturing
>>>checks.
>>
>>
>>I did them in Cray Blitz, and in early versions of Crafty.  But I haven't
>>done checks in the q-search since just prior to the Jakarta WMCCC event.
>>
>>You can control them to an extent...  ie when you get to the q-search, you
>>can consider a check.  But if you look at a capture at the first ply or 2,
>>then there is little point in doing checks deeper in the q-search because the
>>'stand pat' will allow you to avoid the checks totally, earlier in the
>>tree.
>
>76% of all checks give a cutoff in DIEP in qsearch
>on average a check improves score with 2.9 pawns

That is fine.  But if 76% of checks are giving cutoffs, you have a problem
somewhere else, because _most_ cutoffs should be produced by captures, not by
checks.




>
>But it's hard to figure out what checks to do and what you don't need
>to do. It's simply hard work, but possible for everyone to do.
>
>It's hundreds of lines of code in DIEP.
>

That is hundreds of lines of code I don't have to deal with.  And since the
entire concept of 'quiescence search' is flawed in a basic way, I want to make
that part of my search smaller, _not_ larger.




>>I personally don't do them because I don't like the q-search at all.  It is
>>unreliable, and way too selective to trust.  You show me a position where the
>>best q-search move is a check (say a capturing check) and I'll show you a
>>position where the best response to a capture is _not_ another capture, but
>>rather a quiet move that pins or indirectly attacks something.  The q-search
>>misses way too much.  I think it is more profitable to make your basic search
>>better by extending in the right places, since it already has no real inherent
>>pruning errors other than a lack of depth.  I'd like to drive the q-search to
>>almost nothing, as that would eliminate many errors.



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