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Subject: Re: null move margin ?!

Author: Tony Werten

Date: 05:16:18 07/31/02

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On July 31, 2002 at 07:55:51, Ulrich Tuerke wrote:

>On July 30, 2002 at 15:02:25, Tony Werten wrote:
>
>>On July 30, 2002 at 13:56:53, Thorsten Czub wrote:
>>
>>>in an old program i can set the null move margin on or off.
>>>what is the function doing ? any ideas or explanations from the programmers?
>>
>>I'll give it a guess.
>>
>>Normally when you do a nullmove and the score returned is > beta you get a
>>cutoff. The idea is that if doing nothing already gives bigger than beta, doing
>>something would give even more.
>
>You're probably right, Tony. This is an old idea, which had been already
>suggested by the nullmove "inventers" Goetsch and Campbell themselves a long
>time ago.
>
>I have played around with it several years ago. I came to the conclusion that
>it's not worthwhile trying it (microscopically smaller search tree but
>nevertheless a certain risk involved to damage the search).

Yes, same here. The difficulty seems to be the value of a tempo.

In treesearch it seems to be less than 1/8th of a pawn in the opening phase. I
had expected more, specially in that phase.

In middle and engame the value seems to be close to 0. ( Not counting the
positions of course where you promote a pawn 1 move before the opponents king
gets there )

Tony

>
>Uli
>
>>
>>You can go one step further with this idea. Since doing something would be
>>better than doing nothing, then doing nothing doesn't have to be > beta but only
>>> beta - margin since I expect that a move is worth at least "margin"
>>
>>Tony
>>
>>>
>>>what are the effects ?
>>>
>>>thank you.
>>>
>>>Thorsten Czub.



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