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Subject: Re: Root Position

Author: José Carlos

Date: 05:46:06 01/05/01

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On January 05, 2001 at 08:28:07, Severi Salminen wrote:

>>What is the best way to sort moves at the root after each iteration?
>
>I sort root moves so that PV comes first then other moves sorted by number of
>nodes that were visited searching that particular move.

  There're many possibilities here, and the best one can do is try them all.
What I do in Averno is:
  - The first time, I sort with my normal criteria (wining captures, etc...)
  - After that, every fail high at the root makes that move become the first of
the list so, after, several fail highs, at the beggining of the list I have the
last fail highs, the most recent first.

>>What is the best way adjust alpha and beta at the root after each iteration?
>
>First I do a 1 ply search. Then I do search with 1 pawn wide window.

  Aspiration search usually uses the value from the previous search, istead of
this 1 ply search.
  My AS window is 25 centipawn.

>If I fail
>high or low I do a research: score-1, INF (fail high) or -INF,score+1 (fail
>low). The score is the score returned from the search that failed low or high >in
>the first place.

  I do an intermediate try, adding/substracting 150 centipawns and only if that
fails high/low again, use +INF/-INF.

>Notice those +1 and -1. Without those you'll get fail lows and
>highs again. I use fail soft and this means that you have to be sure what to
>return from search, qsearch and evaluate. A wrong value returned from (say)
>futility pruned node means problems. The point is that if you fail high or low
>in the first search you have to be sure that the score returned is the other
>bound of the true score.
>
>>I notice I sometimes when I get a fail low at the root, I do a research, and
>>then get a fail high! The most likely explanation is that I am a moron and it >is bug.
>
>Well, we are all morons, so that can't be an explanation. But yes, it must be a
>bug.

  Hashing and null move can very well cause this behaviour, not necessarily a
bug.

  José C.

>>Are there other issues that are important in the root position, or any "tricks"
>>that one should know?
>
>Don't know.
>
>>Spank you.
>
>Oooh yeah!
>
>Severi



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