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Subject: Re: what does "fail high" mean? In the context of iterative deepening/

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 08:08:54 11/30/02

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On November 30, 2002 at 10:46:59, scott farrell wrote:

>On November 30, 2002 at 10:39:45, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On November 30, 2002 at 09:27:20, scott farrell wrote:
>>
>>>This is a continuration from another thread, but I need some help in
>>>understanding this.
>>>
>>>Some of the engines "failed-high" detecting  the move, before they had fully
>>>completed the ply.
>>>
>>>Uri and I cant understand how they detect or report this.
>>
>>
>>Simple.  When you start an iteration, you should use some sort of aspiration
>>window, rather than setting alpha=-infinity and beta=+infinity.  In the case
>>of Crafty, if the score for iteration N-1 was +.30, then I might start the
>>search at iteration N with alpha=0, beta=+60 to try to bracket the expected
>>score.  This makes the search tree smaller as you can prune lines that lose
>>or win material quickly.  However, if you really do suddenly see a path to
>>win a pawn, that score will be >= +.60, which means the search returns beta
>>rather than a true score.  You have to re-set beta to something larger and
>>search again to get the true score.  That is a "fail high".
>
>mmmmmmmm ........ that's what I guessed. Is there anything tricky I need to do
>with the research. I seem to get too many problems of search instability, and
>end up getting different answers to a standard -INF,INF search.
>
>In my hashtable I have the score, and a/b/exact, and do your suggestion fail
>high, fail low or return exact score (assuming enough depth). I am using
>nullmove and pvs.

It has nothing to do with null moves and hash tables

I do not do -inf,inf searches.

I do today x-30,x+30 search when the score from previous iteration is x and only
if I get x+30 or x-30 I do research.

If I am in the sam iteration I usually use x,x+1 and only in case of fail high I
use a bigger window.

I believe that using always 30 is a bad idea and it is better to use a varaible
based on the changes on the search but I believe that I cannot get a big gain
from it and my program is not at the level when it is worth to investigate it.

Uri



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