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Subject: Re: Null move generalization

Author: Gian-Carlo Pascutto

Date: 22:48:21 04/17/02

Go up one level in this thread


On April 17, 2002 at 18:56:19, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On April 17, 2002 at 17:45:03, Peter McKenzie wrote:
>
>>On April 17, 2002 at 16:53:30, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>
>>>On April 17, 2002 at 16:40:01, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>>
>>>>I don't see how it can completely remove the tactic from ever being seen unless
>>>>the implementation of null move is broken.
>>>
>>>If it has a zugzwang, you will _never_ see it if you don't check for it
>>>(verification search, double nullmove), or use another trick like force
>>>nullmoves away from the root (that is what Crafty does).
>>>
>>>You can always play the 'nullmove' no matter what depth, so you'll
>>>never realize the nullmove is no good.
>>>
>>>i.e. you make an illegal move that is not possible in the real game, and
>>>increasing search depth won't change this.
>>
>>Yes, you are correct.  Some programs can never solve the following:
>>
>>[D]8/8/2p5/pkp3R1/7B/P7/2p3K1/8 w - -
>>
>>http://homepages.caverock.net.nz/~peter/eg_test/pet013.htm
>
>How do we know that they can never solve it?  Maybe they just take a
>stupendously long time.  Here is a crafty session, where I let it reuse the hash
>table on subsequent searches:

As I wrote above, Crafty pushes nullmoves away from the root in the
endgame, so it _will_ find the solution after a long while. But this
is not the pure nullmove algorithm.

--
GCP



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