Author: Roger D Davis
Date: 12:10:07 05/26/02
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One issue is that the program needs stable scores for a variety of moves in order to select the best one. Presumably, it will require more time for the scores for various moves to stabilize, so you might get a slower game than if just one move is played. As I understand it, Alpha-beta does not return a true score. Not that more time is a serious problem, it's just something to be aware of, and on a fast system, it might not even be perceptible. Another issue is that sometimes the best move is to avoid mate, and no other move can do that. Or, the best move avoids the loss of a queen, and the second best move, and all other moves, lose the queen. So, perhaps the second best move could be chosen where it is not less than the best move by more than a constant, and the user could select this constant. So..."Of the 4 best moves, select the one which is just greater than the user specified constant, and reject all others." Thus, if the user selected -3 as the constant, the program would tend to fall into traps that would lose the knight or bishop. If the constant were set to -1, the program would tend to lose a pawn or make cumulative positional mistakes that would presumably present the user with other opportunities in the long run. Or maybe it's already being done like this, or in even a better way, and no one has bothered to say so. Roger
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