Author: Gian-Carlo Pascutto
Date: 10:05:48 02/20/02
Go up one level in this thread
On February 20, 2002 at 11:51:05, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On February 20, 2002 at 02:48:16, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: > >>On February 19, 2002 at 23:27:00, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>OK if you talk about null-move I assume _nobody_ says that it doesn't add >>>its own unique errors into the search. I certainly see enough of them. :) >> >>Perhaps. But you are still using it... > >Sure. But would you prefer to play with your program doing 13 ply searches >_with_ null move, or 13 plies _without_??? There is no question which would >win more games. I have run the experiment already... I do not think the question is pratically valid. If I can play with my program doing 13 ply searches without nullmove, I'll also be able to play with nullmove and go deeper. >null-move is not a forward pruning algorithm. Not in the context of any >AI reference to forward pruning. Because null-move doesn't just throw out >moves ad hoc, it simply searches to a reduced depth instead, which is >significantly different from "forward pruning" or "selective search" as the >terms are traditionally used. Ok, didn't know this, my fault. Whenever I said 'forward pruning' or 'selective search' I was also (and mostly) talking about algorithms like nullmove. >>For one, Chess Tiger seems to be searching nowadays with a branching >>factor that's very close to 2 and sometimes even below that. It's >>obviously not getting any kind of huge error rate that causes it to >>lose each game by playing losing blunders. Far from it, even. > >I doubt it is getting a branching factor of 2 where it is trying to extend >wild checking lines to 60 plies. Can't possibly happen. That was the point. >There are _lots_ of lines in the Kf1 analysis, not just one very narrow line >that goes to 60 plies. There are a _bunch_ of them. Mmm. ChessTiger doesn't seem to output that information, but Fritz 7 does. It is at ply 20 now, and reports a maximum depth of 53 ply, so it was at least extending some lines to that depth. >>I see no reason not to believe this can't be pushed further down. >> >>Now think about it. Once you consistently go below 2, each simple >>speedup will result in more and more plies. >> > >And as you go below 2, you are doing so at great risk of making gross >errors as well. I'm not seeing a lot of them for sure :) >>You won't need to see the full 60 (or 36) ply in every variation >>here. The draw by repetition is going to have a lot of checks in >>it which should allow a program to find it faster. > >Yes you do if you are trying to _prove_ that Kf1 draws. It only needs to prove in every sidebranch that white is at best drawing. That doesn't necessarily take 60 ply in _every_ variation. >It is the _quiet_ moves that are the problem in this particular game >position, not the repeated checks which are not hard to handle at all. But >if you have to search a string of checks, followed by two consecutive quiet >moves, followed by another long string of checks, today's searches simply are >not capable of doing that. At least in finite time searches... Why not? There just has to be enough leftover depth after the first checking sequence to get over the two quiet moves, after which the next sequence will be extended as well. >>I'm assuming a 30 ply nominal search might suffice. That is not so >>far out as you might think. Seeing it's at 22 ply after half a day, >>it'll need (2^8) / 2 = 128 days as a rough estimate. > >Except for the quiet moves, you would be right. But they happen way out >into the tree, say at ply 50. Which means you have to reach that depth >with some search left over to catch the quiet moves and get beyond them >into the checks again. > >Not easy at all. > >In fact, nearly impossible. Perhaps. Perhaps not. The truth is in the experiment, as they say :) -- GCP
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