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Subject: Re: Killer and history

Author: Don Dailey

Date: 12:01:54 06/25/98

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On June 25, 1998 at 09:43:45, Dan Homan wrote:

>I'm not sure the right place to jump into this thread,
>but here will work...
>
>Is the speed-up from incremental move generation the
>only reason to use killers over the history heuristic?
>
>I've runs some quick 'n dirty tests on my program (which
>does not use incremental move generation... rather I
>generate all the moves at once and score them for sorting
>as I generate them), and the history heuristic by
>itself seems superior (in essentially all the positions I
>tested) to killers alone or killer+history.
>
>Perhaps my testing was flawed (it was very quick) or my
>implementation, but I was wondering if anyone else had
>a similar experience.
>
>For programs that do incremental move generation (like
>crafty), killers are surely a win because they don't
>need to do a full move generation if they get a cutoff.
>But what about programs that don't use this approach?
>
> - Dan

My experience with history heuristic is a wash.  My older
programs used to benefit a lot, but maybe too many move
ordering heuristics get in the way?   I dutifully implement
this with each new program just looking for any small
advantage I can get and then always have to disable it.

Are you saying history heuristic worked better when you
did not use the killers at all?

- Don







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