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Subject: Re: Fail highs..which subsequently fail low

Author: Dan Newman

Date: 15:43:47 08/27/00

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On August 27, 2000 at 17:52:44, José Carlos wrote:

>On August 27, 2000 at 17:33:15, Tom King wrote:
>
>>Hi all,
>>
>>a question for programmers on fail highs.
>>
>>what do you do in your program if a fail high is encountered, which on the
>>research fails low?
>>
>>I've ignored this issue, because it doesn't seem to happen all that often (in my
>>program). So if my program finds a move which fails high, even if the research
>>indicates that it maybe shouldn't have failed high, it thinks the move is good.
>>Maybe this is bad? At the WMCCC recently, I noticed a couple of these fail high/
>>fail low moves cropping up at critical, complex positions. Often I was unhappy
>>with the move my program chose in these cases. Perhaps these fail high/ fail low
>>moves need to be treated with suspicion?
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Tom
>
>  In Averno, when I fh, and research with a new Alfa,Beta window, if I fail low
>in the research, I use Alfa as the eval of the position so, as it failed high
>before, it becomes the PV move, until a better move is found.
>
>  Hope this helps :)
>
>  José C.

In Shrike I do something rather horrible.  When I fail high I open up to
[alpha,+inf], and then if I fail low in the re-search, I open all the way up
[-inf,+inf].  I suspect that I'm just wasting nodes in this case.  In fact
it seems like it often comes up with a score that's not too far from fitting
into the original window...  This is something I need to look at.

One scheme I read about (in one of Levy's books I think) involved just
continuing on when you get a fail-high, and searching all the rest of the
moves--unless you get a second fail-high.  Then the question becomes "which
of the two fail-high moves is the best?"  I don't recall exactly how you
proceed after this, but you don't need to re-search any of the other moves
that have already been searched that didn't fail-high.  You do have to
re-search the two fail-highs, however.  I guess this scheme isn't very good
for PVS search since you might end up without a PV to follow.

-Dan.



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