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Subject: Re: Oh I ponder, ponder... What?

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 19:31:01 08/13/01

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On August 13, 2001 at 22:20:18, Artem Pyatakov wrote:

>Well, After tweaking my time control and some of my history settings, it seems
>like I have pondering under control and it DOES help my engine go about one ply
>deeper when it guesses the right move - thanks to people who responded to my
>last post about pondering.
>
>I was wondering about a scenario, however, and about how people handled it in
>their engine (just for fun, I will lay this out like a traditional math/physics
>problem):
>
>Initial conditions:
>Let's say the normal search produced a PV of length=1, because the very first
>move produced a hit in the hash (transposition table).
>
>Problem:
>Right now in my engine, I do not ponder in these cases, because I have no idea
>what opponent move to ponder about (it's not in the PV).
>
>Possible Solutions:
>1) I am guessing that it is often possible to discover the "next" move in the PV
>by simply looking at the transposition table once again and seeing if we can
>extend the PV further
>
>2) May be I should try to ponder about a different move??? I just don't like the
>idea of my engine wasting time...
>
>3) Any other ideas about how this problem can be addressed? I know this is
>probably not a very important thing, but I was just curious about a possible
>solution.
>
>Thank you.
>
>Artem

Try not to stop the search in a fail-high state.

If you do fail high on the first move, and the fail-high move had a PV come back
in the last ply, the last ply's PV is your current PV, too, while you are in a
fail-high state.

Don't allow the PV to cut off from the hash table after one move.

Write complicated logic that does a short full-width search to find a vaguely
best move, then "ponders" the best move.

I concentrate on the first three, but the latter would improve my program if I
didn't add any bugs trying to do it.

bruce




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