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Subject: Re: qsearch questions

Author: Bas Hamstra

Date: 00:43:09 12/04/02

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On December 03, 2002 at 22:45:16, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On December 03, 2002 at 18:59:20, Jon Dart wrote:
>
>>On December 03, 2002 at 17:16:58, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>the idea is to do anything you can to exclude moves.  Because below each move
>>>you search, you grow a tree, and that is expensive.  If alpha is 0.00, and
>>>the current material score is -15.0, then capturing a pawn is not going to
>>>help, and avoiding that capture avoids the tree below it.
>>
>>I've noticed that Crafty uses the material value as a basis for calculating
>>futilty. In other words, if material + SEE gain + safety margin < alpha, you cut
>>the move (I do something similar at present).
>>
>>What Mike is suggesting is to use the total position eval, which is also
>>something I've experimented with. So: if eval + capture + SEE gain + safety
>>margin < alpha, you cut. If you have large positional scores, this is possibly
>>safer (the "safety margin" in Crafty is only 1 pawn).
>
>If you follow the logic carefully, this is also what crafty is doing.  At
>the top of Quiesce() I grab the positional (stand-pat) score, and if this is
>> alpha, then I set alpha to that value.  All the pruning is then based off
>of this positional (material+positional returned by Evaluate()) score plus the
>capture gain, plus a fudge as removing a piece could increase the score but
>probably not by a lot...

It is not the same IMO. I think Jon means this: suppose Eval is below alpha.
Then in Crafty you calculate Delta=Alpha-Mat-Margin. However more accurate might
be Delta=Eval-Margin. IE you prune based on Eval rather than material.
I tried this, and the result is it will throw out less captures while I see no
noticable improvement in accurracy.

Bas.










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