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Subject: Re: Nice king safety testposition

Author: José Carlos

Date: 01:26:04 08/17/01

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On August 16, 2001 at 20:23:39, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On August 16, 2001 at 20:21:55, Peter McKenzie wrote:
>
>>On August 16, 2001 at 17:56:58, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>
>>>On August 16, 2001 at 17:51:05, Roy Eassa wrote:
>>>
>>>>On August 16, 2001 at 15:50:28, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On August 16, 2001 at 15:42:51, Frank Phillips wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Mine takes forever and 12 ply to see the trouble, even if I turn up the open
>>>>>>h-file with rook (queen) on it king safety term.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Do the programs that solve this quickly do it by shear speed, evaluation or
>>>>>>clever extensions?
>>>>>
>>>>>Phalanx solves it very fast.
>>>>>Phalanx searches less than 150K NPS on my 950 MHz machine.
>>>>>It has very clever search extensions.
>>>>>It has very clever king saftety.
>>>>>
>>>>>So darn clever (in fact) I have a hard time figuring out what is going on,
>>>>>despite having the source code at my disposal.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Phalanx, eh?  How has it done in tournaments vs. the other engines?  If not so
>>>>good, what weakness(es) does it have to offset these strengths?
>>>
>>>It finished about the center of the pile in "The Battle of the Crowns" chess
>>>tournament in the 4 crown division.  (This was over a year ago, and many of the
>>>program versions are now outdated).
>>>
>>>    Program          Score     %    Av.Op.  Elo    +   -    Draws
>>>  1 LGoliath     :  37.0/ 52  71.2   2289   2445   76  99   26.9 %
>>>  2 Crafty       :  32.0/ 52  61.5   2294   2376   85  77   34.6 %
>>>  3 AnMon        :  31.5/ 52  60.6   2294   2369   86  83   28.8 %
>>>  4 Amy          :  28.5/ 52  54.8   2297   2331   93  85   21.2 %
>>>  5 SOS          :  28.0/ 52  53.8   2298   2325   94  82   23.1 %
>>>  6 Bringer      :  27.5/ 52  52.9   2298   2318   96  72   32.7 %
>>>  7 TCBishop     :  27.0/ 52  51.9   2299   2312   97  73   30.8 %
>>>  8 Phalanx      :  26.5/ 52  51.0   2299   2306   99  74   28.8 %
>>>  9 Comet        :  24.5/ 52  47.1   2301   2281   62  96   44.2 %
>>> 10 Gromit3      :  24.5/ 52  47.1   2301   2281   79  96   25.0 %
>>> 11 Gromit2      :  21.5/ 52  41.3   2304   2243   89  88   21.2 %
>>> 12 Francesca    :  18.5/ 52  35.6   2307   2204  102  82   17.3 %
>>> 13 Yace         :  18.5/ 52  35.6   2307   2204   87  82   28.8 %
>>> 14 ZChess       :  18.5/ 52  35.6   2307   2204  108  82   13.5 %
>>>
>>>The engine is 150K NPS on a very fast machine.  Other engines are much faster
>>>and get one or two full plies deeper at every turn.
>>>
>>>Attach a really fast motor, and Phalanx might rule the world.
>>
>>If it had a really fast motor, maybe it wouldn't have time to do the fancy
>>extensions and fancy king safety stuff?
>
>Well, good point.
>
>I really don't know where the brakes are in the system, since I have not done
>careful profiles.
>
>But I suspect the move generator.  Most engines develop 3-4x the NPS of Phalanx
>on my machine.  Maybe the darned clever search and all the fancy eval stuff is
>the reason for that.  But I ?suspect? not.

  Last time I had a look at Phalanx code I saw something that can explain it's
slowness: When it believes it's near the endgame, it does both evals midgame and
endgame, and then chooses a in-between value, depending on how close to the
ending the game is.
  I haven't studied its move generator, but it's usually accepted that the
move-generating time is not more than 20% of total search time. So having a slow
move generator shouldn't make a program 'dead-slow' itself.

  José C.



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