Author: Joe Stella
Date: 17:11:39 12/30/97
Go up one level in this thread
Here's some advice from a "perpetual beginner" at chess programming...
:-)
In the Q search, my program orders captures simply by capturing the
largest piece first. I have no depth limit at all in the Q search.
My Q search contains roughly 1.3x as many nodes as the main search
(I count leaf nodes as part of the main search) and I search only
captures.
I prevent search tree explosion by not expanding any capture move
if that capture does not bring the score above alpha. By "score",
I mean the material score plus the highest possible positional
score (1 pawn). In these cases, I use alpha for the score.
Sure you will miss some tactics this way, but the theory here is
that tactics should be found by main search extensions. The job
of the Q search is just to find a stable position to evaluate.
This probably will not get you a world-champion class program,
but if you just want something simple that works pretty well, then
try it out!
Joe Stella
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.