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Subject: Re: Depth vs Time

Author: Ulrich Tuerke

Date: 14:53:11 06/25/02

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On June 25, 2002 at 17:42:58, Tony Werten wrote:

>On June 25, 2002 at 17:30:51, Ulrich Tuerke wrote:
>
>>On June 25, 2002 at 02:40:59, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>
>>>On June 24, 2002 at 18:53:24, Steve Coladonato wrote:
>>>
>>>>>I wonder what you consider 'comparable'. There's no guarantee
>>>>>they'll be similar whatsoever.
>>>>
>>>>That was not a well formed statement on my part.  What I meant was that for a
>>>>given ply depth, the evaluation that program X comes up with should be
>>>>comparable to the evaluation that program Y comes up with if both programs are
>>>>fairly equal in overall strength.
>>>
>>>No. There is no guarantee whatsoever that this is true.
>>>
>>>>Therefore, if the algorithms/heuristics that
>>>>program X uses allow it to get to ply M faster than program Y, then program X
>>>>should win if the time allowed constrains how much time each program can use for
>>>>analysis at that depth.  For example, if program X can get to ply 11 in 30 secs
>>>>and program Y takes 1 min 30 secs to get there, the overall analysis that
>>>>program X can generate during a game should be better than that generated by
>>>>program Y and program X should win.  So it seems that the efficiency of the
>>>>algorithms/heuristics will determine the overall strength of a program.
>>>
>>>Again, this is completely false.
>>>
>>>I will repeat what I said several times earlier in this thread, and that
>>>is that plies are not comparable between chessprograms. The analysis of
>>>one program at ply 11 can be completely different and of higher
>>>quality than another at the same 11 ply. If the second program reaches
>>>ply 11 faster, we have no information at all to make any solid conclusions
>>>about the relative strength of those programs.
>>
>>Completely agreed. This integer which we are talking about should be better
>>called "iteration number". It basically defines how many times the search had
>>been restarted exploiting each time the results of the preceeding iteration in
>>order to extend the search tree.
>>IMHO, the relation of iteration number to search depth is a very loose one,
>>having in mind that todays programs are heavily pruning as well as extending.
>>
>
>Hmm. I can imagine that a program that uses partial ply extensions might decide,
>when the timelimit is almost reached, to start an iteration with only half a ply
>deeper.
>
>Or even worse. Every uses iterative deepening, but did anybody ever prove that
>full plies are best ? Maybe 2/3 ply is better ?

I think, that I have heard that Junior uses 2 iterations in order to deepen by
one ply.
A long time ago, when watching the main line of David Lang's good old Psion
chess, it seemed to me that David deepens by 2 plies per iteration in Psion
Chess. The length of its PV grew like 3, 5, 7, ... iirc.

Uli

>
>Tony
>
>>Uli
>>
>>>
>>>--
>>>GCP



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