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Subject: Re: Move ordering at root of search

Author: Tom King

Date: 23:30:28 05/07/01

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On May 07, 2001 at 18:32:29, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On May 07, 2001 at 16:48:41, Tom King wrote:
>
>>Hi all,
>>
>>there's been a few postings recently about strategies for programs to
>>effectively order moves at the root of the search. One strategy which is quite
>>interesting is the "order by nodes searched" heuristic, used by Crafty (and
>>maybe others). Currently, my program, Francesca, uses a very simple "order by
>>eval()" heuristic for ordering root moves.
>>
>>As a test, I played a series of games between the standard version of my
>>program, and a version which uses a "order by nodes searched" heuristic for
>>ordering root moves. I set these two versions playing blitz, last night. When I
>>just checked, they had played 130 games, and each had scored 50%. Each had won
>>37, lost 37, and drawn 56. Amazing that it should end so even!
>>
>>It's difficult to draw any conclusions from this.
>>
>>Probably more games are needed to see if "order by nodes searched" really helps.
>>My hunch is that it may be a win at slower time controls - move ordering becomes
>>more important the deeper you search.. [this reminds me of the time back in 1995
>>when the move ordering in my program was very poor.. didn't seem to matter too
>>much at blitz, but at slower time controls, the search just ground to a halt. I
>>remember (fondly) how I made some improvements to Francesca's move ordering, and
>>suddenly she was searching throught the deeper plies 10 times quicker! Ah! great
>>days..]
>>
>>Rgds,
>>Tom
>
>
>The way to test is fixed-depth searches with both approaches.  One will give
>slightly smaller trees.  this is not a _big_ win, just a win.  (It _can_ be a
>big win in some cases, and once you do a parallel search it will be an even
>bigger win...

Hmm.. I'll persevere some more with this idea. More games, different time
limits, do some test suites, and see what I find. Certainly, it doesn't seem
*worse* than my current scheme, just not better!

Rgds,
Tom



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