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

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 18:52:05 08/27/00

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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?


Two answers.  First I use PVS, so keep this in that context:

1.  if the null-window search fails high, but the re-search fails low, I
ignore it totally.

2.  If the null-window search fails high, _and_ the re-search (with the
aspiration window) fails high, then I keep the move as best, even if the
re-search with beta,+infinity 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?



Perhaps.  I have found that the null-window fail high can't be
trusted, but since that is verified with a subsequent alpha,beta
re-search, it might fail low and get ignored, or fail high and get
re-searched a third time with +infinity for beta.  Seems safe enough.
But when this is happening, strange things are going on.  If you turn null-
move off, most of these fail high/fail lows go away...  so that is the source
of the problem.



>
>Cheers,
>Tom



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