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Subject: Re: Extensions (concept) question.

Author: José Carlos

Date: 00:05:48 09/29/01

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On September 28, 2001 at 14:37:32, Alvaro Jose Povoa Cardoso wrote:

>Suppose I'm doing a 12 ply search and at ply 2 I have a promotion or a pawn at
>the 7th rank.
>Should I extend? Or should I extend these cases only at frontier nodes /
>qsearch?
>My reason is that if we are a ply 2 we don't need to extend because we have 10
>ply remaining to search.
>But if we are at fontier nodes or at quiescence search then we need to search
>deeper these and other cases.
>So, could we only do extensions at frontier nodes and at qsearch?
>Perhaps my idea/concept of extensions is incorrect.
>Could someone comment on this?
>
>Best regards,
>Alvaro Cardoso

  Others have answered perfectly, but I want to add something.
  First, extensions in qsearch does not make much sense, given the way most of
us implement qsearch, that is, a capture-only search where even checks are
ignored (some poeople don't ignore check in qsearch, but I'm speaking of the
most general case). The goal of the qsearch is simply evaluating in a stable
node, where no exchange is in progress.
  Second, actually the answer to your question is "it's up to you". Yes,
there're no forced rules to do things. There's field for creativity and you
create the rules. You can chose not extending anything and not doing qsearch at
all and try to get as deep as possible, or extending every interesting line and
doing checks in qsearch and SE, or anything in between.
  The best you can do is try. And the figure out what's the influence of it on
the program's play. And decide if you like it or not. You don't even need to
focus on results. If you have fun being your program speculative, even if it
loses some strength... again it's up to you (that's my case, BTW).

  José C.



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