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Subject: Re: The number of nodes of critical trees?

Author: Pham Minh Tri

Date: 15:28:59 11/01/00

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On November 01, 2000 at 13:25:23, Ernst A. Heinz wrote:

Hi Dr. Ernst,

>Hi Pham,
>
>>In the book "Scalable Search in Computer Chess", Dr. Ernst A. Heinz
>>said, "The best chess programs generate search trees with only 20%-30% more
>>nodes on average than the critical alpha-beta trees" (pp 22).
>
>I am always amazed how much people like to quote statements
>out of context, thus making them look weird and fishy.

Sorry, I am new to computer chess and still learning and
looking for documents. I have only few materials and your
book is one of the best so I read it most. Therefore, when
I ask for checking my understanding, I always try to quote
from what I have without experience.

Your answer is good and enough for me. And I will try
to find the original materials as your suggestion.
Thanks.

Pham

>
>If you had cared to mention that the quote originates from
>a subsection of the book called "Move Ordering", the 20% to
>30% overhead should have been easy to understand. It simply
>quantifies the effectiveness of move-ordering schemes used
>by state-of-the-art chess programs in their PVS searches in
>comparison with the best-first move ordering of critical
>trees. Of course, you must do fixed-depth searches with
>uniform path lengths (i.e., without any forward pruning or
>extensions) in order to measure this overhead.
>
>Now, if you add forward pruning and large transposition
>tables leading to frequent cutoffs, the effective trees
>searched by modern chess programs actually shrink to less
>than half the corresponding critical trees of a standard
>alpha-beta search.
>
>>- I guess that Dr. Ernst A. Heinz does not concern some techniques like
>>hash table, null move, rasoring and so on, which make the real trees could be
>>much smaller than critical trees.
>
>Yes, see above -- the 20% to 30% overhead solely relate to
>move-ordering issues. They are meant to show how well good
>schemes for move ordering (such as the one given in my book)
>work with PVS searches in computer-chess practice.
>
>=Ernst=



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