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Subject: Re: Feng-Hsiung Hsu's talk at Microsoft

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 08:22:38 10/09/02

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On October 08, 2002 at 01:52:16, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:

>On October 08, 2002 at 00:52:38, Eugene Nalimov wrote:
>
>>He also says that their Q-search is much more powerful than the one that is
>>usually used in the software-only programs.
>
>How can he tell? Nobody knows what the commercials are doing.

You can't _know_ everything, but you can decipher a lot by looking at the
program
output...


>
>>Hsu gave some details why they don't use null-move:
>>(1) He thinks that singular extensions and null-move gave more-or-less the same
>>rating difference (100-200 points IIRC).
>
>Bull. Their own reported findings directly contradict this!

It depends.  Early findings suggested SE was tremendously effective.  It turned
out to
be true mainly in test positions.  Later findings suggested that the effect was
much more
modest.  But that was a restricted form of SE.  Their most recent version was
far different
from anything they had done in the past, including extending when there are only
two or
three good moves, rather than just one, etc.  So nothing they have previously
posted really
contradicts the above statement since the two approaches are different.






>
>>(2) It's very hard to implement both null move and singular extensions in the
>>same program.
>
>Bull.

I don't believe that is "bull" at all.  I had a very effective SE implementation
in Cray Blitz,
which used a very limited null-move search.  I have _never_ gotten an
implementation in
Crafty to work nearly as well.  In fact, I haven't (so far) gotten an
implementation to break
even in self-play testing.  The two things are diametrically opposed, one trying
to extend,
one trying to reduce the depth.  Add the hash table and it gets messy.  Add the
sticky hash
table they mentioned and it gets messier still...





>
>I'm sorry, I don't believe a word of it.
>
>--
>GCP



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