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Subject: Re: legal move generator that is 20 times faster than Crafty

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 23:48:48 07/02/01

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On July 02, 2001 at 05:12:48, Andrew Williams wrote:

>I wouldn't care too much about that. Suppose you have loads of stuff in your
>makemove() that makes it possible to achieve very good move-ordering. Or that
>makes it very quick to evaluate a node (because much of the work has been done
>earlier). Then your perft speed will be terrible, but your program could be
>excellent.

I think people often get so hung up on making things go fast that they lose
sight of the goal.

Foremost, the goal is to play excellent chess, so you pick evaluation and search
techniques that get you there.

A second goal is to get as deep as you can with your set of evaluation and
search techniques, by ordering moves properly.

A third goal is to increase speed by generating moves and executing them faster.

A problem with move-generation addicts is that they are only concerned with part
of a sub goal.  It doesn't matter how quickly you can generate moves if you
can't execute them quickly because you've shunted all of the work into
"makemove".  And it doesn't matter how quickly you can generate and execute
moves, if you've destroyed your ability to order them.  And your program's play
will suffer if you don't get anything out of your move generator and move
execution stuff that will help you evaluate positions and do pruning, etc.

bruce



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