Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Code for "krrkrb" missing in egtb.cpp (crafty et al.)

Author: Marcus Heidkamp

Date: 00:56:24 06/06/01

Go up one level in this thread


On June 06, 2001 at 03:05:54, Guido wrote:

>IMHO in the last question you are right: it is possible to use one only
>tablebase (.nbw or .nbb) to find the response for an ending position. I did it
>with my tablebases, not with EGTB, seemingly with success, but the program
>becames very complicated and cpu time increases consequently, so I abandon the
>idea.
>
>In fact, suppose you use a .nbw file, there are four possible situation:
>
>1) you can use the .nbw tablebase directly
>2) after exchange of the men colour you can use the .nbw tablebase directly
>3) you have to make a ply and after you can use the .nbw tablebase
>4) you have to make a ply and exchange the men colour and then you can use the
>.nbw tablebase
>
>But in the two last cases you have to analize all the possible plies to find the
>best result, but what happens if the ply is a promotion or a capture? Obviously
>you have to load another tablebase and  repeat the procedure; moreover the
>loaded tablebase could not be used directly, but it could need an exchange of
>men colour or, in the worst case, the execution of another ply or both. And this
>process could continue so the code must be recursive.
>During this process you have to save the best result for the player, keeping
>into account every time you need of a ply or of an exchange of colour. Very
>simple :-)!
>
>So my opinion is that the game is not worth the candle (italian: il gioco non
>vale la candela)
>
>Ciao
>Guido Antonelli

Actually I use the TB probing code just after my Hash probe, and a successful TB
probe will be stored permanently (i.e. with a maximum search depth) to the hash
table. I did not see any significant performance deficits, but my program is
still a rough sketch. I guess, because I use MTD(f) as the Alpha-Beta-Driver, it
works due to the cutoff-approach of MTD.

Regarding your four points I think that going one ply deeper is not a real
problem. If you do captures or promotions you have to look into the new TB
anyway. Of course you have to do on average the av. branching factor/2 (i.e.
38/2=19). But for people lacking disk space (like me) it works, instead of
giving no result at all, or doing the 1-ply search manually. And for the
professionals: If the other side exists, you simply cut off and do not search
one ply deeper. So what's the disadvantage there?

Marcus



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.