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Subject: Re: Correct values if all moves are pruned?

Author: Severi Salminen

Date: 00:46:26 01/06/01

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>If you are extended futility pruning only some moves in Search (and allowing
>some through) your best score so far should be set by the best move that gets
>through as normal.  If only one move makes it through its the best move.

Yes, that is clear.

>If you are pruning ALL moves you think there are no winning moves at this
>position.  In this case you should fail low and return alpha.  Note DO NOT just
>return best score (which is probably set to -INFINITY)... I learned that from
>experience -- it caused the nullmove mate threat extension to go nuts and
>exploded the tree.

My initial point was that could I find a better value than just alpha. Returning
a lower value could improve the possible necessary researches - and hash score
as you mentioned.

>In a normal qsearch you compute a static eval score... test if its >= beta and
>you can stand pat... If not set best score to the static eval with an assumption
>like nullmove -- that there will be some move at this point that can improve (or
>at least maintain) the score... some move should be better than no move at
>all...

Yes, I'm doing stand pat cutoffs. (Forgot to mention...)

>When you are going to prune away the rest of (or all) the captures (because of
>futility condition or because the SEE says they are losing) return the best
>score thus far.
>
>If all moves were pruned this best score is the static eval of this node you
>computed at the top.

Ah, of course! Now I'm allways returning alpha, even if all moves were pruned
and the standpat score is <alpha. In this case I should of course return the
stand pat score.

>>I ask this because PVS or aspiration window search doesn't seem to like "wrong
>>values"
>
>I don't understand this.

Well, I've had many interesting problems because figuring out what to return in
these cases.

Severi



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