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Subject: Re: Search Instabilities

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:41:39 01/21/02

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On January 21, 2002 at 06:52:57, David Rasmussen wrote:

>What are the best techniques for dealing with the search instabilities of PVS,
>null move pruning, hashing and repetitions?
>
>Specifically, is there a way to limit the number of false fail highs at the
>root?
>
>/David




You have to do two things:

1.  If you get a fail high at the root on a zero-width window (any move after
the first move should be searched with a zero-width window) you can't trust it
unless you re-search it with a bigger beta bound and make _sure_ that it doesn't
then fail low.  Such fail-high (zero window) fail-low (non-zero window) is an
artifact of null-move and if you play such a fail high move even if it fails low
on the re-search, you will die...

2.  If you get a fail high at the root on the zero-width window, and when you
re-search you get another fail high on the original aspiration window, or you
get a true score, then you can trust it.

Case 1 is the killer although it doesn't happen every move, once in a game
is more than enough.



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