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Subject: Re: I just got a possible stupid idea

Author: Torstein Hall

Date: 05:29:35 10/04/01

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On October 03, 2001 at 18:55:30, Uri Blass wrote:

>On October 03, 2001 at 18:33:10, Torstein Hall wrote:
>
>>On October 03, 2001 at 17:59:14, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>On October 03, 2001 at 16:51:49, Torstein Hall wrote:
>>>
>>>>On October 03, 2001 at 16:10:43, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On October 03, 2001 at 16:02:26, Torstein Hall wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>What if you run two paralelle search/chess  processes. One going very fast with
>>>>>>very little evaluation. The other going slow, with a big evaluation. The fast
>>>>>>one always start searching on the move calculated by the slow process with the
>>>>>>big evaluation, just checking for big materiall loss, tactical stupidities
>>>>>>further down the tree. If it find one, the fast process sends a message goes
>>>>>>back to the slow process and tells it do start work on the next best move.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Then you perhaps can have the best from two "worlds". Intelligent search, with
>>>>>>no tactical blunders!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Torstein
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Read Jonathan Schaeffer's reports on "Sun Phoenix".  He did exactly that.
>>>>>But he did it because he was not getting a very good distributed speedup
>>>>>on larger numbers of processors.  So some did a normal chess search together
>>>>>as a group, the rest ran a tactical searcher called "minix".  Minix was used
>>>>>to refute moves chosen by the positional program.
>>>>>
>>>>>The problem is trying to rationalize the knowledgeable search vs the tactical
>>>>>search.  If the tactical search says your positional move loses material, what
>>>>>do you do?  Propose another move?  And if _that_ loses material?  The search
>>>>>becomes hugely inefficient...
>>>>
>>>>If the tactical search says you lose material, of course you have to change the
>>>>next best move, and so on. But that limit can perhaps be even more than a pawn?
>>>>And of course if all the first moves in your oredering are very bad, it do not
>>>>matter that much if you are not very effective. You are probably already
>>>>loosing!
>>>>
>>>>Anyway, its another approach, and I find the consept intriguing.
>>>>Can I find Jonathan Schaffer's report on Sun Phoenix on the net somewhere?
>>>>
>>>>Torstein
>>>
>>>I totally dislike the idea of using fast searchers for tactics.
>>>
>>>I believe that in theory a fast searcher should be worse in tactics because it
>>>has no idea which lines to prune or extend and has no idea about the right order
>>>of moves.
>>>
>>>It is possible to get more nodes per second by not using null move or extensions
>>>and not calculating order of moves but the program is certainly going to have a
>>>bigger branching factor and it is going to be weaker in tactics.
>>>
>>>My example is an extreme example but I believe that if you want an engine to be
>>>better in tactics then doing it slower in nodes per second may be a good idea.
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>I for one do not have the time or ability to build a chess program, so I can not
>>argue about, what teqnique to get deepest first. But the whole idea was to have
>>a fast tactical deep searcher to correct a slow, big "evaluator".
>>
>>Torstein
>
>I believe that if you care only about tactics then it is better to have a slow
>searcher and in this case adding a big evaluation is not going to be a big
>problem.
>
>Adding a big evaluation is a big problem if you have a fast searcher and in this
>case the program may be 10 times slower because of complex evaluation but if you
>add big search rules before evaluation then the program may be only 2 times
>slower thanks to the evaluation and adding the big evaluation is not a big
>problem.
>
>Note that I also did not build a chess program(I built only a move generator to
>calculate the number of legal games of fixed number of moves) and it is only my
>intuition.
>
>Uri

The idea was for a two processor system to have a fast tactical "checker"
running in paralell with a slow large evaluator. If the fast tactical search
finds a refutation, then you give a message to the slow big evaluator to change
line. If this realy would work, is quite another question! :-)

Torstein



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