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Subject: Re: Cutting down my qsearch

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 06:48:40 04/23/01

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On April 23, 2001 at 09:45:45, Ulrich Tuerke wrote:

>On April 23, 2001 at 09:34:20, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On April 23, 2001 at 05:52:00, JW de Kort wrote:
>>
>>>Dear friends,
>>>
>>>I have added a qsearch to my program and as a result the number of nodes in my
>>>search has exploded. Sometimes the program searches ten times as much nodes in
>>>the qsearch than in the regular search. Can anybody give me some advice on
>>>methodes i can use to limit the number of nodes in the qsearch?
>>>
>>>Thanks in advance.
>>>
>>>Jan Willem
>>
>>
>>A simple idea works well:
>>
>>When you enter a q-search node, if the current score is (say) a queen below
>>alpha, then capturing a pawn or piece is not going to bring the score back up
>>to alpha.  Those captures are useless to examine..
>
>I think that this is just what I had suggested in my reply, but you have
>explained far better why this should work.
>
>You say "useless to examine" . After all, this algo involves some kind of
>forward pruning and there is a certain risk in missing some tactics.
>
>However, I admit that this trick appears to be reasonably safe. I guess,
>everybody is doing it.
>
>Nevertheless I had observed that in some rare cases, a test position will be
>solved later (i.e. in a higher iteration) as a consequence of this trick.
>
>Do you agree ?

Just like NULL MOVE or any selective element for searching, it will cause some
problems to be solved more slowly.  However, I suspect it will cause *most*
problems to be solved faster.  That is the way it works with every good idea.



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