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Subject: Re: Pondering ("think on opponent's time")

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:57:11 11/12/02

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On November 12, 2002 at 03:31:58, Uri Blass wrote:

>On November 12, 2002 at 02:06:21, Russell Reagan wrote:
>
>>On November 12, 2002 at 01:14:36, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>If we evaluate every possible move by having a thread for every legal move
>>>then we have an idea about the second best move.
>>
>>Starting a thread for every legal move serves no purpose. Either you are going
>>to set them all to the same priority, and you will be searching (say) 35 moves
>>for 1/35th of the time you are pondering. Basically you're doing a search with
>>no pruning at the root. So you're doing exactly what the opponent is doing, only
>>you will never see what he sees because you're not pruning away moves at the
>>root. When the opponent moves, you will have only searched the "right" move
>>1/35th of the time. So if the opponent takes 3 minutes to move, you only
>>pondered on the "right" move for a little over 5 seconds. In a lot of positions
>>there will be a lot more than 35 legal moves, and that number of seconds keeps
>>dropping. Basically you just wasted that 3 minutes.
>>
>>If you set the threads with one to run at a higher priority than the others, the
>>one that you set with a higher priority is going to dominate all of the other
>>threads since it will always be searching, so you might as well have just
>>pondered on that one move, because not a single one of the other threads are
>>going to result in anything useful.
>>
>>Russell
>
>No
>
>If I see better score in one of the thread with low priority
>or if I see fail low in the main thread then I can increase the priority
>of one of the threads that was given originally low priority.
>
>Note that I do not use threads in movei but I guess that I can change the
>priority of a thread during the search.
>
>Uri


That is not going to work.  First, running N searches at one time is going to
kill
alpha/beta performance.  Second, all the threads will be competing for CPU time.
The net result is that you are going to search four or five plies _less deeply_
which
is going to be horrible.



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