Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Crafty PVS question

Author: Omid David

Date: 03:29:41 08/31/02

Go up one level in this thread


On August 31, 2002 at 06:24:18, Bo Persson wrote:

>On August 30, 2002 at 18:42:40, Omid David wrote:
>
>>On August 30, 2002 at 17:39:27, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>
>>>On August 30, 2002 at 17:37:25, Patrik wrote:
>>>
>>>>Difference is that Crafty used alpha instead of value when it re-searches.
>>>>Is there any reason to use alpha instead of value?
>>>>Using value which is greater than alpha seems to cause more cutoffs than using
>>>>alpha.
>>>
>>>If you get a fail high on the first search and a fail low on the second (*),
>>>you will lose your PV's. This does not happen if you do the research with
>>>alpha.
>>>
>>>(*) If you think this can't happen, you haven't been doing chessprogramming
>>>long enough.
>>>
>>>--
>>>GCP
>>
>>If you take a look at Aske Plaat's PhD thesis "Research Re: Search and
>>Re-search" and his numerous other publications, you'll notice that on many
>>occasions his results are not substanciated enough in practice.
>>
>>For example he conducts all his experiments (on 20 test positions, depth 8) in
>>brute force fixed depth search, which is extinct nowadays (even in 1996, who
>>didn't use a form of variable depth search?).
>>
>
>That was done to get numbers that were easy to compare (I think he says so too).

Yes. Page 27 of the thesis: "Studying this class of algorithms [fixed-depth
full-width] has the advantage that performance improvements are easily
measurable; one has only to look at the size of the tree."

But as Heinz and many others have shown, variable depth algorithms are
comparable too; but in addition to the size of the tree, the tactical strength
should also be measured (by experimenting on test suites or self play matches).


>If you have extensions and pruning in the tree, *any* changes to the tree will
>affects its size. Even a seemingly random event in the search can get an
>extension triggered or not. So to have a stable base for his measurements, he
>disabled most stuff, and ended up with a fixed depth search. This somewhat
>reduced the usefulness, but it *did* produce a result.
>
>
>I have seen that a simple thing like recoding quicksort for the move list can
>affect the tree size by 50% in one particular test position. The sorting was
>still correct, but moves with the same preliminary score ended up in a different
>order.
>
>
>
>Bo Persson
>bop2@telia.com



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.