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Subject: Poor man's singular extension

Author: Scott Gasch

Date: 20:23:53 08/15/01


Recently I've been messing around with singular extension (s.ex).  As I see it,
the problem with s.ex is that with alpha beta you do not have the precise value
of a move -- you only have an upper or lower bound on the score.  I am doing
fail hard alpha beta and have been playing with this:

If all moves in a position are terrible (less than alpha - delta1) except one...
and that one is within delta2 of alpha, search that one move over again one ply
deeper.  I started doing this with delta1 = MATE-300 as I was hoping to find
positions where there is only one move that will save you from mate.  I've been
gradually reducing delta1, though, and dumping the positions where it would
extend.  I also thought about changing the second condition: only extending if
the one move was > alpha (that would have to mean it's a PV node because if it
was a FH it would have returned immediately and never get to this code).

What is the typical way to implement s.ex?  What do you think about the ideas
above?  How do you do it?

Thanks,
Scott



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