Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Experimentation with move ordering

Author: Andrew Williams

Date: 11:06:27 11/28/00

Go up one level in this thread


On November 28, 2000 at 12:52:57, Scott Gasch wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I posted a couple of messages about move ordering yesterday and wanted to share
>some results from my (limited) testing.  I ended up implementing the suggested
>"apparently losing captures" (MVV/LVA) after all others order.  In one test
>position this resulted in a tree 200k nodes larger at 8 ply but in two others it
>resulted in a marginally smaller (under 40k nodes) tree at 8 ply.  I will do
>more testing on this matter but it may be a moot point because I intend to write
>a SEE pretty soon.
>
>I also did some experimenting with ordering captures that take the last moved
>enemy piece.  At low search depth this seems to make some difference but at
>higher depth this heuristic actually grew the tree in all three test positions > I tried.
>
>I also did some playing with history weight and settled on hist[x][y] += (2 <<
>depth).

I use history[whoseTurn][frsq][tosq] += (depthremaining*depthremaining)
I have a separate table for white and black. Every few plies I divide
this number back by a lot (can't remember how much or how often).

> My numbers (this is total nodes searched until ply x including plys
>1..x-1) for d2d4 d7d5 e2e4 e7e5 are currently:
>

PostModernist   Monsoon
1 145           45
2 214           621
3 864           3725
4 3330          14146
5 14057         38694
6 38838         183449
7 120729        598020
8 294806        1286875

This is with all my normal extensions on.

>
>I am doing null move (R=2/3 depending on remaining and normal futility pruning
>with a slightly larger than safe window on frontier nodes and in qnodes.  I've
>read about extended futility pruning and razoring too.  I'd be interested in
>other ideas to cut down the tree search size... be they other move ordering
>heuristics or other pruning methods that are reasonably safe.  How do the nodes
>searched in the position given compare to other engines?
>
>Thanks again,
>Scott

I try two killers from the current ply and then two from two plies ago. The
last time I isolated this and tested it it was a very small win. Other than
that, my move ordering is hash, winning captures, equal captures, killers this
ply, killers from two plies ago, then non-capturing moves then losing captures.
Looking at that list, I think I'll test killers before equal captures, though
I'm sure I'd have tried that before. In any case, only the first eight moves at
a node are ordered (maybe it's not eight). The assessment of a capture is done
by a SEE.


Andrew



This page took 0.01 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.