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Subject: Re: question about futility pruning and positional evaluation

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 03:24:08 12/08/00

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On December 07, 2000 at 16:09:32, Ernst A. Heinz wrote:

>>If you use _any_ kind of pruning, you can perturb the root score.  Thanks
>>to the transposition table that grafts parts of the tree into odd places.
>>There is no way to anticipate which branches are useless _here_ but the
>>hash results might improve the results over _there_.  And as a result, you
>>can get different root move scores no matter how "sound" the pruning.
>
>But the effects you describe, Bob, are rather due to the
>hash-table usage than to the pruning. They might also
>occur if you just change your move ordering.
>
>Anyway, in the case of futility pruning at frontier nodes
>with a remaining depth of 1 ply they hardly matter (if at
>all) because it simply lifts inevitable "stand-pat" beta
>cutoffs at horizon nodes up one level in the search.
>
>=Ernst=

This depends upon the margins you use and the positional score your
evaluation can deliver. If i prune on a few pawns last ply
but a certain queen move near opponent king can deliver because of
the piece configuration already around the king like +10 pawns positionally,
then i obviously have a problem.

If capturing a pawn after which my pawn gets a connected passer at
say for example the 7th row or 6th row, then we have
another obvious case of a move which possibly gets a huge positional
score, then the futility again is pruning wrong and possibly
influencing the root score.

There are a lot of less obvious cases which also go wrong.

Vincent



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