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Subject: Re: question about futility pruning and positional evaluation

Author: David Rasmussen

Date: 08:57:49 12/08/00

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On December 08, 2000 at 06:18:45, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On December 07, 2000 at 13:56:31, Bert van den Akker wrote:
>
>>In a previous question about Futility pruning Vincent Diepeveen mentioned:
>>
>>>Futility pruning is very dubious. It sure speeds you up, but it's
>>>dubious and tends to give you slight positional
>>>differences that make a program play positional
>>>a lot weaker.
>>
>>Can sombody explain me why Futility pruning tends to give slight positional
>>differences?
>
>First of all it heavily relies on the positional evaluation of
>a program. If you have a very simple evaluation with small scores
>then the problem is a lot smaller when you have huge scores (no matter
>the size of the evaluation).
>
>Suppose i am in a position X where evaluation of the position is
>
> 0.055
>
>Now suppose alfa is 0.500
>
>Suppose i use a value 0.400 to create a region but that
>a move i delivers after making a move an evaluation of 0.700:
>
>  So for move i the rule:
>   if( eval(X)-region <= alfa )
>     prune move i
>
>Obviously this way of pruning is HEAVILY dependant upon what
>a move positional can deliver to me. Is it a huge score, then
>you have a major problem because the smaller the value 'region'
>in the above example the more one can prune. The bigger i make
>the value 'region' the less one can prune.
>
>Not to mention that a move can place down a tactical trick, like
>threatening mate, and as i do checks in the qsearch,
>i see the completion of it in the qsearch.
>

But this wont happen if your margin is large enough. As large as your largest
position scores. As explained by Ernst. Very simple. And accurate.



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