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Subject: Re: Tree reduction and search depth question

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:51:39 08/10/01

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On August 10, 2001 at 04:30:20, José Carlos wrote:

>  After completely rewriting my chess program (Averno), I've run into the
>null-move world, which I haddn't in old versions.
>  In old Averno I had:
>
>  -Reasonably good move ordering (hash move; good captures; killers; ...)
>  -Transposition table
>  -2 killers
>  -Lazy eval
>  -Check and recapture extension
>  -Some out-of-check stuff in qsearch
>
>  With that, I was searching 6-7 plies in blitz (in midgame) and 7-9 in
>standard. [Athlon 550]
>
>  I've read some open source programs to get a clue on how to search deeper, and
>now I have:
>
>  -Nullmove (tried R=3 and R=2, not yet R=2/3)
>  -Futility pruning
>  -Same move ordering as before
>  -Same hashing scheme
>  -Same 2 killers
>  -Same Lazy eval
>  -Check and null-threat extension
>  -No out-of-check stuff in qsearch
>
>  And now, I search 7-8 plies in blitz and 8-10 in standard (and the worst thing
>is that the program looks weaker than the old one!)
>  That looks like a poor search depth, isn't it? So what am I missing to get, as
>most null-movers, 12-13 in standard?
>  SEE? History heuristic for move ordering? ETC? Razoring?

Are you sure you have implemented null-move correctly?  IE R=2 everywhere,
trying null-moves _everywhere_ (except for not allowing two consecutive null-
moves in a row)?  Allowing multiple null-moves in a single path with the above
restriction?

You should be going deeper.  Significantly deeper.




>  Sorry for _answering_ instead of _trying_ but, as I have so little free time
>to work on my program, any advice would be appreciated.
>  As well, I'd like to know if, with the stuff I've implemented so far, I should
>expect a better performance. In that case, I might have a bug somewhere.
>
>  Thanks in advance,
>
>  José C.



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