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Subject: Re: crafty fail low question: was Re: crafty fail high problem

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:13:33 06/04/01

Go up one level in this thread


On June 04, 2001 at 17:00:10, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:

>On June 01, 2001 at 13:59:11, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:
>I have been thinking about fail high's and fail low's. If you have a fail high,
>and you have used a significant portion of the time available for this move   (>
>25% ?), you should just make the move without further searching, as you will not
>have time to resolve the fail high and investigate other moves anyway.
>
>Fail low's are a different problem. When you get a fail low, what you know is
>that the current move has an upper bound at ply n of the ply n-1 value - window
>while all other moves have an upper bound at ply n-1 of the ply n-1 value. It
>seems it might be better to search some of the other moves before re-searching
>this one.
>
>This leads to a crafty question. In search.c, if all the values are < alpha (a
>fail low), the value returned is alpha and not MAX(values). Why is this ?


Why does it matter?  The value you get back is totally useless.  Because
everything cut off low on the alpha value.



>
>>On May 31, 2001 at 10:44:18, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>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...
>>
>>It appears to be trivial to do. I put the following code in iterate.c
>>
>>  int failinc[4] = {150, 350, 1000, MATE};
>>  int failhi = 0;
>>  root_beta += failinc[failhi++];
>>  if (root_beta> MATE+1)
>>    root_beta=MATE+1;
>>
>>and it speeded up the result on this problem about 100 fold. It certainly needs
>>more testing and tweaking, but definitely seems worth looking at. Here are snips
>>from the log files.
>>
>>before the change
>>
>>               13    31.70   3.39   1. Rxh7 Kxh7 2. Rh2+ Kg8 3. Qh4 Bxf6
>>                                    4. exf6 Kf8 5. Qh8+ Qg8 6. Rh7 g5 7.
>>                                    f7 Qxh8 8. Rxh8+ Kxf7 9. Rxc8 g4 10.
>>                                    Kf2 Kf6
>>               13->  40.06   3.39   1. Rxh7 Kxh7 2. Rh2+ Kg8 3. Qh4 Bxf6
>>                                    4. exf6 Kf8 5. Qh8+ Qg8 6. Rh7 g5 7.
>>                                    f7 Qxh8 8. Rxh8+ Kxf7 9. Rxc8 g4 10.
>>                                    Kf2 Kf6
>>               14    48.98     ++   1. Rxh7!!
>>               14   121:42   4.01   1. Rxh7 Kxh7 2. Rh2+ Kg8 3. Qh4 Bxf6
>>                                    4. exf6 Kf8 5. Qh8+ Qg8 6. f7 Qxh8
>>                                    7. Rxh8+ Kxf7 8. Rxc8 Kg7 9. Kg2 g5
>>                                    10. Bxg5 Rxb2+ 11. Kg3 e5
>>               14-> 122:06   4.01   1. Rxh7 Kxh7 2. Rh2+ Kg8 3. Qh4 Bxf6
>>                                    4. exf6 Kf8 5. Qh8+ Qg8 6. f7 Qxh8
>>                                    7. Rxh8+ Kxf7 8. Rxc8 Kg7 9. Kg2 g5
>>                                    10. Bxg5 Rxb2+ 11. Kg3 e5
>>
>>after
>>
>>               13    29.80   3.39   1. Rxh7 Kxh7 2. Rh2+ Kg8 3. Qh4 Bxf6
>>                                    4. exf6 Kf8 5. Qh8+ Qg8 6. Rh7 g5 7.
>>                                    f7 Qxh8 8. Rxh8+ Kxf7 9. Rxc8 g4 10.
>>                                    Kf2 Kf6
>>               13->  37.29   3.39   1. Rxh7 Kxh7 2. Rh2+ Kg8 3. Qh4 Bxf6
>>                                    4. exf6 Kf8 5. Qh8+ Qg8 6. Rh7 g5 7.
>>                                    f7 Qxh8 8. Rxh8+ Kxf7 9. Rxc8 g4 10.
>>                                    Kf2 Kf6
>>               14    45.65     ++   1. Rxh7!!
>>               14     1:26   4.01   1. Rxh7 Kxh7 2. Rh2+ Kg8 3. Qh4 Bxf6
>>                                    4. exf6 Kf8 5. Qh8+ Qg8 6. f7 Qxh8
>>                                    7. Rxh8+ Kxf7 8. Rxc8 Kg7 9. Kh2 g5
>>                                    10. Bxg5 Rxb2+ 11. Kg3 e5
>>               14->   1:54   4.01   1. Rxh7 Kxh7 2. Rh2+ Kg8 3. Qh4 Bxf6
>>                                    4. exf6 Kf8 5. Qh8+ Qg8 6. f7 Qxh8
>>                                    7. Rxh8+ Kxf7 8. Rxc8 Kg7 9. Kh2 g5
>>                                    10. Bxg5 Rxb2+ 11. Kg3 e5



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