Author: Sune Fischer
Date: 08:38:19 09/28/02
Carlos Pagador just sent me a game where frenzee made a clear blunder move. It wasn't a bug in the search, but in the time management. What happened was that the pv move failed-low at the root (I think that's what it's called?), it was a mate in 3 so it had to be avoided. The searched continued and the second move searched happened to be a very bad queen "sacrifice"! Unfortunately time was up before it could search the third move, so it played this losing queen move. It could have been worse actually, if it hadn't searched the second move either it would have gone straight into the mate, not suspecting the move was bad at all. I wonder how many buggy moves are made because of these fail-lows, I never thought about this at all, but of course the actual move being returned could be almost random when this happens. I reckon this is common knowledge, I just don't remember having seen it explained anywhere? Ok, the fix is obvious, namely to finish the ply if your first move "fails-low", and somehow ask for a time extension to make it happen. -S.
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