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Subject: Re: History Heuristic

Author: Peter Kappler

Date: 13:39:17 08/29/00

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On August 29, 2000 at 16:16:23, Peter McKenzie wrote:

>On August 29, 2000 at 14:22:21, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On August 29, 2000 at 11:46:12, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On August 29, 2000 at 11:33:23, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On August 29, 2000 at 10:19:38, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On August 28, 2000 at 22:21:40, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On August 28, 2000 at 19:32:05, Larry Griffiths wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I have been reading about the History Heuristic and have seen pro's and con's
>>>>>>>about it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I plan on implementing it to see what happens.  This heuristic is related to
>>>>>>>killer moves and uses the from and to squares in a 64 x 64 array to maintain
>>>>>>>history information when moves are bestmoves or cutoffs.  Each entry has 2 to
>>>>>>>the depth power added to it when a bestmove or cutoff is found.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Would you recommend the History Heuristic, and has anything changed for the
>>>>>>>better with the method described above?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Thanks in advance.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Larry.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Works fine, but don't use 2^depth...  for reasonable search depths, that will
>>>>>>overflow 32 bit counters almost immediately.  I use depth^2 which is much
>>>>>>safer...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Other than that it works fine.  If you don't get a cutoff by the time you have
>>>>>>tried a few history-ordered moves, you probably should give up and just search
>>>>>>the rest of the moves in random order.
>>>>>
>>>>>Oh well is this bob speaking?
>>>>>
>>>>>searching things in random order is never a good idea actually.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>On nodes where you have to search _all_ moves, the order in which you search
>>>>them is 100% immaterial.  These are the so-called ALL nodes. also called FULL
>>>>in Knuth/Moore's paper.
>>>
>>>The tree below this node is sure having a lot of cut nodes. The way in
>>>which you search this all node is sure making a big difference for those
>>>nodes.
>>
>>It doesn't make _any_ difference at all, and this is both mathematically and
>>experimentally provable.  Search a tree and save _everything_.  Then re-search
>>the same tree, but on nodes where you searched everything and returned alpha,
>>use a different move order.  Same sized tree.  It _has_ to work that way, or
>>else alpha/beta is flawed.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>>So I don't follow.  Once you are convinced that you can't find a fail-high move
>>>
>>>You never know this in advance. In crafty the chance is 5% that you get
>>>a fail high in DIEP it's 1%, still that's 1% chance to cheaply cutoff.
>>
>>I don't follow.  I fail high 92% of the time on the first move.  98% of the
>>time on the first 2 moves.  By the time I have looked at the hash table move,
>>the captures, two killers and 4 history moves, if I haven't failed high, I
>>am probably _not_ going to fail high.  Certainly way below 1% of such positions
>>fail high, since 98% fail high on the first two moves or not at all.
>
>Perhaps it is worth doing the full 'sort' at nodes near the root of the tree.
>Or where remaining depth > X, where X is quite high (say 5 or 6).
>
>At these nodes, it might be worth it because you get quite a big saving from the
> (very) occasional cutoff.
>
>Just an idea, I think I might try it :-)
>

I think it's a good idea.  I added this about a month ago, and it seemed roughly
break-even, but for deep searches, it turned into a small win.

And this was with a very crude move scoring scheme.  Lots of room for
improvement...

--Peter


>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>>using normal means, random is just as good as anything else, since "anything
>>>>else" hasn't worked so far.  And since random (generated order) is cheaper than
>>>>anything else, why not?  Works for me.  And others, I might add...
>>>
>>>So random clearly isn't smart.
>>
>>
>>When it works?  Smart is what works and produces the best result with the
>>lowest computational cost.



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