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Subject: Re: Blunder move because of bad time management

Author: Sune Fischer

Date: 09:56:16 09/28/02

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On September 28, 2002 at 12:20:00, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On September 28, 2002 at 11:38:19, Sune Fischer wrote:
>
>>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?
>
>
>It is easy to fix.  If you fail low on the _first_ root move, then re-search
>it right then to get a score.  Now you know how bad things are and how much
>time you are willing to invest in order to find a better move...

Okay, chess lingo question: how can I fail low on the first root move, the alpha
value is -inf?
I don't do aspiration search or anything at the first move, should I?

I do search the best move from the previous depth first, the rest are not sorted
in any way.
All I know is that the second move should never be better than the first, that
would be a sign something is wrong. I guess I can call it a fail low for the
first move (relative to the second move).

-S.



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