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Subject: Re: computer programs cannot see a very simple draw in a pawn ending

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:21:58 06/23/98

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On June 23, 1998 at 06:21:36, Ernst A. Heinz wrote:

>On June 23, 1998 at 03:58:26, Ulrich Tuerke wrote:
>
>>On June 22, 1998 at 16:11:47, John Stanback wrote:
>>
>>>This is a nice position for testing/debugging transposition
>>>tables and draw by 50 move rule.  I modified Zarkov to allow
>>>it to search beyond 100 plies, but it didn't find the draw.
>>>Then I added 1 line of code to store positions which were
>>>scored by the 50 move rule or draw by repetition in the
>>>transposition table before returning from search().  Now it
>>
>>I'm afraid this can imply some problems for the search. Assume
>>that you have flagged a position as a "draw" in your transposition
>>table because the 50 move rule had applied. If this position is later
>>reached at a lower depth via a transposition, then the hash table
>>would return a "draw". But may be, it really isn't because at lower
>>depth the search might be still below the 50 move threshold ?
>>This could result in real foolish moves returned from the t-table.
>>IMHO, similar remarks hold for the draw by repetition case.
>>
>>I think that I had once detected problems through storing these
>>kinds of positions in the hash table. Now, I don't store them.
>>
>>Did I get somehing wrong ?
>
>I do not think you got something wrong -- I completely agree with you.
>
>=Ernst=


It's a problem, but it is just as bad to ignore this.  If you have to choose
between errors with, and errors without, why not take the performance gain?
I store everything and haven't seen any ugly effects doing so that I don't
see if I disable such.

Dave Slate always said "don't store draws".  Ken Thompson said "store
everything".  I go along with the latter...



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