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Subject: Re: Matevalues, hashtables and iterative deepening

Author: Frank Phillips

Date: 10:16:12 11/30/01

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On November 30, 2001 at 07:25:42, Erik Robertsson wrote:

>I´ve been trying to correct some bugs wich occur when storing mate values in the
>hashtable.
>
>If the position is evaluated as a mate value at the end of an iteration in the
>iterative deepening, I stop searching and execute the best move. In some
>positions however, I find that due to finding positions in the hashtable it can
>result in the engine alternating between two different mate variations ending in
>a quite embarrassing draw by repetiton.
>
>I've tried to solve this by not automatically stop the iterative deepening
>unless I've found a shorter mate than found in the previous move. Is there a
>better way of solving this? I remember reading something about this some year
>ago, but cannot find it.
>
>I use the draft = *infinity* for mates wich are not bounds which should result
>in that most positions with mate should be in the ht in the next search. Maybe
>it has something to do with the bounds, but I´ve tried Crafty's MATE-300 bound
>and it sometimes result in getting the evaluation of the position as MATE-300.
>
>This has kept me awake a few nights, please help or I will go insane.

Do not know if this will help.  Here is what I do following a discussion here
some time ago.
This comment is from my StoreHash() function to remind me.

I also use your trick of not bailing out of the search unless the mate score is
higher than that from the previous iteration.

Frank



*	To avoid potential problems with EXACT MATE values, Bruce Moreland
*	suggests converting them to LOWER_BOUNDS and:
*		    MATE in N		>=	 MATE in 300
*		   -MATE in N		>=	-MATE in 300
*		>=  MATE in N		>=	 MATE in 300
*		<= -MATE in N		<=	-MATE in 300
*		<=  MATE in N		not stored (Bruce Moreland).
*		>= -MATE in N		not stored (Bruce Moreland).



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