Author: Adrien Regimbald
Date: 13:22:37 08/12/00
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Hello, >You'd be surprised how little difference it makes to the overall search speed in >normal positions. ColChess spends a negligible fraction of its time testing for >checkmate, and I really don't think that it affects its ELO negatively at all. >Far from it, in those positions where it is advantageous it often helps ColChess >to win from equal (or worse) positions against stronger programs. > >Remember that a doubling in search speed probably only improves ELO by 60-70 >points. I'm talking about a speed decrease of probably less than 1%, and the >occasional benefits are quite substantial. You're completely missing the point here. If you want to guarantee that you have correctly ascertained if there is a mate in <x> from any given position, you need to do a brute force search up to depth <x>, possibly depth <x+1> depending on how you do mate detection. If you aren't talking about doing brute force searches, then you aren't guaranteeing you see all the short mates, in fact you can be missing mates all over the place. If you are talking about doing brute force searches, then you're an absolute genuis, as nobody in the history of computer chess has managed to do a brute force search at only 1% slower than doing the basic alpha-beta, or whatever search method you use! Regards, Adrien.
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