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Subject: Re: HashTable problems

Author: Carlos del Cacho

Date: 14:24:24 09/02/00

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On September 02, 2000 at 16:49:11, Larry Griffiths wrote:

>I am adding "EXACT" hashtable entries at each ply when there are no cutoffs.
>

This could be your mistake. You should make a difference between a PV node (a <
value < b) and a fail low (when all your moves yield a value below alpha). You
can't flag a fail low as an exact value value because it isn't such. Your
opponent is failing high and maybe the best move wins a rook when he just needs
to capture a pawn to get a beta cutoff. In those cases, all you know is that the
value of the subtree searched is equal or less than what you got. If I
understood you correctly this is the source of your problems.

So, this is the typical hash scheme (after checking that TT depth >= actual
depth) :

- fail high => store value as a lower bound on the true score of the subtree
from that node. If you get to one of these and the retrieved value from the
table is > beta, then fail high without further search (it can only go better
and we already know it's over beta).

- exact => just return the value from the TT.

- fail low => this is an upper bound, so if it you get here and that value is <
alpha you just fail low since you know it just can get worse.


carlos



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