Author: Heiner Marxen
Date: 15:24:50 05/24/01
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On May 24, 2001 at 15:50:42, leonid wrote: >Hi, Heiner! Hi Leonid! >One question but about something else. Do you remember in your "mate2" search >what pieces you look at first for responding side? Side that respond on attack. > >When I regarded quickly your description, I had the impression that we did >almost the same work on this level even if names are different. Only I am >curious to know what pieces you search first for responding side. Had the >impression that it is not for the kings moves that your program look frist. My >program search for one legal king's moves and only later one legal move for the >other pieces. Some terminology, first. A classic mate problem mostly is stated as "white to move and mate in N". Then, I call white the "attacker" and black the "defender". The attacker moves are solution "candidates", and the defender moves I call "answers". We talk about the last three (legal) plies of a mate-in-2: a candidate followed by an answer, followed by a mate move. In a normal mate search we have to consider (search) all legal candidates, one answer for each of them, and then detect, that there is no mate move left (most of the time). In normal search Chest would prefer checking and capturing moves as answer. But the "mate2" module tries to replace the search of some of the candidates, by proving that there exists an answer after which there will not be any mate move. Here, a fixed answer is picked for all candidates. It is one of the available king moves. If there is none available, "mate2" just fails. To pick a king move was just the most simple choice: the king is always there. Also, "mate2" has to be quick, quicker than the search it replaces, so it better not considers too many alternatives. Chest picks that king move which has maximal king mobility after the move. How Chest manages to prove, that after a candidate move, and a fixed answer there will not be any mate move possible, is somewhat involved. Chest estimates the set of flight squares around the defender king (to be mated) that is guaranteed to be left after candidate and answer, and then with the help of precomputed tables matches that against the attacker material on the board. Often enough it finds "the attacker cannot cover all those flight squares in just one move", which is the desired result. [More details available on request ;-] There is a long comment at the top of "mate2.c", but I'm not sure whether it is legible for anyone except myself :-( If you have more questions, just continue to ask :-) > When king is searched later, speed is almost identical but >slightly lower. All difference could be around 1%. NPS will be much higher. >Could go up 25%. I speak all the time about what is in your program 3 plys >search. Unfortunately, I did not understand this part. If you want me to understand it, you have to rephrase. Cheers, Heiner >I just went today to this part and looked if something in the past was not done >in its best. Tried to change the generation of moves for in mate in 1 (in your >its is mate in 2) but reached the same response that I remember was found many >years ago. I still wonder how you did this part. > >Cheers, >Leonid.
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