Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

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

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 19:54:34 08/13/01

Go up one level in this thread


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).
>



I try two things:

(1) probe the hash table.  If you get a hit, and it has a suggested best
move, ponder that.  It isn't always good, but it is better than nothing.

(2) flip sides, do a short search, and use the move that returns as the
move to ponder.  Crafty calls this a "puzzling search" and you will see
the message "puzzling for a move to ponder" on rare occasions.




>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



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.