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Subject: Re: crafty fail high problem was Re: A really nasty position

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:44:18 05/31/01

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On May 31, 2001 at 08:56:33, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:

>On May 30, 2001 at 15:14:46, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>3.  When I fail high, I just relax
>>beta to +infinity, rather than the tiered approach I used in Cray Blitz.  If
>>there are lots of mates here, that are not forced, the program still has to
>>search them all out as with +infinity, you get zero beta cutoffs at positions
>>where white is to move, until you establish a better beta value after a lot
>>of searching.
>
>Silly question...why don't you do it in Crafty? It's not like it's
>hard to code, and it gives real benefits.
>
>I use the CB approach after you once described it here or on rgcc and
>it's saved my ass a dozen times...
>
>--
>GCP


That is actually a good question.  I guess I have simply not stopped to think
about it, but it was obviously a reasonable idea.  Harry had this one ugly
position that at depth=12 would fail high, but we could not get a score back
from ever.  We discovered that the problem was that if we relaxed beta to +inf,
about 90% of the positions were mates.  Very deep mates.  But not forced.  When
we put in the tiered fail-high, the problem went away.  It has been on my to-do
list for years, but I simply haven't gotten to it...



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