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Subject: Re: Is it possible for pondering to have a slightly negative impact?

Author: Pat King

Date: 06:50:30 08/11/01

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On August 10, 2001 at 16:04:18, Artem Pyatakov wrote:

>I just implemented pondering in my program, but it seems that this has a
>negative effect on average search depth in games. Here is my reasoning:
>
>1) My engine is not very strong, so especially in games against humans, the
>percentage of the times when it ponders correctly in "indecisive positions" is
>low.
>(Aside question: What approximate percentages do programs like crafty have?)

I am in exactly the same position. Zotron's rating sank slightly when I
implemented pondering. In my case, it seems to be because my time management
stuff went out the window because it's hard to know what you'll find in the hash
table.

>
>2) So, let's say the ponder was incorrect. Wouldn't the ponder process have
>ended up loading a lot of "junk" into the hash table and the history table?
>

This is no worse than having nothing, or very old stuff, in the table from not
pondering at all. As to increasing the percentage of pondering "hits", I think
this has a lot to do with move ordering, and I know I've got a lot of work still
to do in this department.

>Does this even sound reasonable? Has anyone run into this? Or is this most
>probably a bug? Any suggestions/comments are appreciated.
>
>Thank you.
>
>Artem

Pat



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