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Subject: Re: Why it should be worth to obtain N-best-trees!

Author: Ingo Lindam

Date: 08:23:27 12/05/02

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On December 05, 2002 at 11:04:57, Tony Werten wrote:

>On December 05, 2002 at 10:50:47, Ingo Lindam wrote:
>
>>Hello all,
>>
>>quoting myself I would like to start a new discussion about why I think its
>>worth two obtain N-best-trees (as a result of the search process), containing
>>the N-best moves in each exactly evaluated node of the search tree.
>>
>>Robert Hyatt agreed that the effort to do this should be able to estimate by
>>getting N*N times slower. This means 4 times slower to obtain a 2-best-tree
>>instead of just obtaining a single PV:
>
>Nonsense:
>
>At iteration 0 do a full width search for all moves and you get a score back for
>all moves.
>
>Then do an aspiration search for the first 2 moves. Decide wich is best and
>2ndbest. Then search the remaining moves with (2ndbest,2ndbest+1) If a move
>fails high research it and decide new 2ndbest score.
>
>No way this will slow you down factor 4.
>
>Tony

Hello Tony,

I appreciate your comment very much! I am also sure that it will me not slow
down factor 4. But factor N*N (for obtaining the N-best-tree) seemed to be the
lowest factor I got Robert Hyatt to agree with.

I just needed a const. factor for my argumentation.

Thank again!

Internette Gruesse,
Ingo



>
>>
>>Ofcourse I am aware of winning nothing and just loosing a lot of time when
>>I play games and my aim is just to obtain the best move according to one given
>>evaluation function (at the end of the quote I hint on the possibility to use
>>the N-best-tree for rescoring on basis of a second, improved evaluation function
>>that is more complex and therefor just usable on a reduced search space/tree).
>>
>>"
>>BUT...
>>I think engines can do more than this (if we allow them to do so). They can
>>analyse and give a tree to argue for their decission by giving a scored tree,
>>rather than a single variation.
>>
>>And also the developer will save so much time (yes, SAVE time) by doing this
>>(not when playing a game) but when testing and developing.
>>
>>Give the engine a lot of time to analyse some crucial/test positions, store the
>>tree and than enjoy the speedup when testing several evaluation methods on this
>>reduced search tree.
>>
>>And when you agree that doing a N-best search slows down not exponentially, but
>>going deeper into the searchtree does. Then there must be a certain limit for
>>going deeper. And when you have no time to go deeper, why not use a better, more
>>complex evaluation function on the N-best tree in that time.
>>
>>Even more when you think of...
>>
>>a) N is const.!: so = O(N*N * x^ply) = O(c * x^ply) keeps O(x^ply) in O(ply)
>>notation
>>b) rescoring on the N-best tree can given without any problems to another
>>processor or even maschine.
>>c) even generating the N+1-best-tree given a N-best-tree can done by an
>>additional maschine for ply K as soon as N-best tree for play K.
>>d) generation the N+1-best-tree (i the MP case) can be accellerated by giving
>>the hash of generating the N-best tree.
>>
>>Do I miss something?"
>>
>>Internette Gruesse,
>>Ingo



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