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Subject: Re: Problem searching too deep!

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 14:58:24 05/28/02

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On May 28, 2002 at 16:14:14, Uri Blass wrote:

>On May 28, 2002 at 15:51:30, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On May 28, 2002 at 09:30:48, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>
>>>On May 28, 2002 at 09:09:18, Daniel Clausen wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 28, 2002 at 04:05:47, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I believe it is then safe to stop the search at 150 plies, that's 50 plies left
>>>>>for extensions(!), it will simply have to do, even if I get a crash in 1 of
>>>>>10000000 games ;)
>>>>
>>>>If you'd be in my programming team, either you or me would be looking for a new
>>>>job now. ;) A simple additional if-statement at the beginning of search makes
>>>>this 100% correct in all cases and slows down your engine by a _very_ small
>>>>factor. So basically you're just careless here - and therefore maybe also
>>>>careless in other places. ;)
>>>>
>>>>Remember that even though these small speedups do add up over time (and maybe
>>>>give you an additional +2 ELO boost in the next 10 years *grins*) the risk for
>>>>crashes or misbehaviours also adds up. And Murphy will make sure it will happen
>>>>during the most important game. =) [should it happen during a game against my
>>>>engine (in the future.. maybe..) I'll remind you of this thread =)]
>>>>
>>>>HTH :)
>>>
>>>"careless" :)
>>>Hmm, I don't know. I need to extend ~100 plies(!!) to get a crash for a total of
>>>200 plies search!
>>>Can you come up with any kind of position that would even slightly challenge
>>>this limit? To get many extensions you need checks or so, but then the position
>>>won't transpose as good (because it won't be blocked pawns), so really you need
>>>maybe 170 extensions in a 30 ply search, in all it's extremely unlikely.
>>
>>I got zapped by some "straightjacket" problems Harry Nelson used to work on.
>>The initial problem was to define a position where black and white had the
>>most consecutive forcing moves (one possible reply).  I think Harry had one
>>that went 32 plies, which meant that in Cray Blitz, it extended 32+ plies
>>as well.  And beyond that most of the remaining moves were forced for a while.
>>It blew our 64 move limit quite nicely (we had 64 because early crays had 64
>>as a max vector limit due to hardware vector register size).
>
>
>If you do not have a condition of no repetition I can easily break that record.
>
>[D]5b1k/4p1p1/4PpP1/5P2/2p5/1pPp4/1P1P4/rKB5 w - - 0 1
>
>Uri


I have _always_ had repetition detection enabled, and it generally avoids
the problematic rook checks that could drive the search very deep...  But it
can fail to stop the search soon enough in rare positions, so I have a check
to prevent overflow...



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