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Subject: Re: Beginner's guide?

Author: Don Dailey

Date: 14:10:37 05/14/98

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On May 14, 1998 at 05:32:13, frank phillips wrote:

>Can anyone point me in the direction of explanations of the techniques
>used in chess programming.   Having learnt a bit of C this year and with
>the help of articles found on the Net about search algorithms managed to
>write crude connect4 and othello programs,  I would now appreciate some
>pointers to simple but thorough and complete explanations of  bitboards
>and hashtables.  Several articles I have found partially explain these
>topics but usually assume that the reader has more knowledge than I do,
>perhaps because they assume a basic programming background which I do
>not have.  The source code to Crafty (thanks Bob) is well documented but
>beyond me at the moment.  On a specific issue, I would be grateful for
>an explanation of how to get a pv out of the (alpha/beta negamax)
>search.  Everything I have tried so far based on storing the best move
>in an array pv[depth] has failed, so I seem to be missing a fundamental
>point - or am just plain stupid :-/

Frank,

Another idea that some use is to "walk the hash table" if you have one.
Each hash table entry has a best move associated with it so you simply
walk through them.   I don't like this method as well but it's easier
to implement and has the advantage of not slowing down the program.
PV's take a small toll on the search speed.

- Don









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