Author: Scott Gasch
Date: 22:26:09 03/05/02
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On March 05, 2002 at 22:18:25, Matt White wrote: >Hey all, I have a quick chess programming question. I am working on a program >for my senior project, and I was wondering: is there an efficient way to get a >space count? I know that this is an important positional factor, but for the >life of me, in all of the code that I have looked at, I have never seen a place >in the evaluation function that rewards high space count. Am I missing >something? > Well the problem with space count is that it is dubious at best without a concept of square control. There are quite a few engines that compute square control (PostModernist, Diep?, The King?). The drawback of square control is that it is expensive to compute, though. It comes in handy in a lot of places, though (king safety, threat of a passer, control of center... to name a few). I keep some (cheap) square control information incrementally and generate the rest when I need it in interesting positions. I seem to remember a simple German chess engine called OliThink or something that computed and used space control as the primary factor in its eval at every node. Other than the speedup of computing square control incrementally at make/unmake move I do not know an efficient way though. Good luck with your project. Scott
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