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

Author: Andreas Herrmann

Date: 07:21:34 08/14/01

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On August 13, 2001 at 22:54:34, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>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.
>

Hi Robert,

how deep is Crafty searching in this short search. Depends this on the level?
I had the same idea with a search to ply 4, but not implemented yet.

Andreas

>
>
>
>>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



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