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Subject: Re: Search Instabilities

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:46:40 01/22/02

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On January 22, 2002 at 04:43:30, Tony Werten wrote:

>On January 22, 2002 at 00:46:01, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On January 21, 2002 at 10:55:50, Daniel Clausen wrote:
>>
>>>Hi
>>>
>>>On January 21, 2002 at 10:41:39, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>[snip]
>>>>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...
>>>
>>>Anyone has a trivial example at hand which demonstrates this behaviour?
>>>
>>>Why is it that a fail-high with a zero window can't be trusted but a fail-high
>>>with a non-zero window can? Is "non-zero window" enough to be trusted? Or does
>>>it have to be a certain minimum window? I'm sure that as soon as someone posts a
>>>mini-example which shows this behaviour, even I will understand it. :)
>>>
>>>Sargon
>>
>>
>>I don't have an example now as I found this bug several years ago and then
>>eliminated it as I explained.  It is an artifact of mixing null-move with
>>the null-window PVS search.
>
>Did you find it to be related to the size of the window ? That's what I seem to
>get from some tests.
>
>BTW wouldn't that make MTD quite useless ?
>
>Tony


I think it is related to your evaluation code and search extensions.  The size
of the original aspiration window had no effect for me, because the problematic
fail highs were _always_ on the null-window PVS search on a root move other than
the first one.  I found some positions where _every_ move would fail high on
the null-window search then fail low on the re-search.  Turning off null-move
cleaned it up perfectly.  Just ignoring the occasional erroneous fail-high has
worked well for me...



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