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

Author: Don Dailey

Date: 10:24:19 06/23/98

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On June 23, 1998 at 12:45:51, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>
>On June 23, 1998 at 09:21:58, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>Dave Slate always said "don't store draws".  Ken Thompson said "store
>>everything".  I go along with the latter...
>
>I store draws but not at the exact point that they occur.
>
>You can write something that will very carefully make sure that it doesn't ever
>store a 0.00 in the transposition table.
>
>I don't think this is necessary, and it doesn't do anything about cases where a
>draw score caused the value of a node to change score, without changing score to
>the draw value.
>
>But on the other hand, what possible good does it do to store a 0.00 when the
>reason you are storing that value is that you *just* detected a rep?  When you
>encounter this node later, I suggest that it is better to be able to check for a
>rep again, and if there is one, return 0.00.  If there isn't, then you avoided a
>mistake, because the value of the node is almost certainly *not* 0.00.  Same
>with 50-move conditions.
>
>But yes, to go through and dissect out all of the 0.00's, that is a mistake I
>think.
>
>bruce

I try not to store draw scores, but I do store scores of zero.  In my
program a draw is a unique score that cannot occur normally.  All
normal positional scores are even numbers and a draw score is an
odd number, usually -1 from the computers point of view unless I have
reason to change the contempt factor.

This doesn't solve all the problems associated with this phenomenon,
perhaps it doesn't even help much at all,  but I believe
it is at least a small improvement because scores close to zero are
the most common ones of all and I would hate to throw them all out.
With a parallel program I cannot use the same tricks like using sticky
bits for move history and calling hash table matches with these entries
draws.  So in the hash table I never store a direct draw score.

- Don



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