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Subject: Re: Branching factor, etc

Author: Bas Hamstra

Date: 03:29:16 09/01/02

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>Now suppose FP is right but we don't prune. What happens ? We go to quiescence;
>evaluate; get a score above beta; and cutoff. So no nodes saved.
>
>FP can only save nodes when we would otherwise spend time in quiescence; ie
>score is not above beta ie fp was wrong.
>
>People who report big wins with fp probably have an "inc(nodecounter)" in the
>top of quiescence, wich doesn't get called when pruning.

Couldn't agree more. Those nodecounts are very misleading, what counts is depth.
And once you measure that, it suddenly isn't so great anymore. Heinz bases his
research on nodecounts. But the nodes saved are "cheap" nodes, that are
_accurately_ cut by lazy eval with little cost anyway. FP is good for picking op
wood in blitz, not much more.

But regarding SEE, not doing it MUST mean a fairly higher qrate, no? It slows
you down and gets somewhat better in tactics. Only I hardly see that tactical
advantage, really. Of course it might depend on your qsearch. Mine is typically
2-3 x bigger than a Crafty like miniqsearch, not doing SEE would make it even
worse.

Best regards,
Bas.











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