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Subject: Re: Penalty for Display of Alternate Moves = ?

Author: Roy Eassa

Date: 13:42:01 12/06/02

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On December 02, 2002 at 18:01:00, Bob Durrett wrote:

>
>Fritz will display second best, third best, etc. moves and give a line for each.
> But the Fritz manual says doing so requires extra computation when compared to
>calculating only one move and displaying a line for it.
>
>I do not know what other chess-playing programs have to offer insofar as display
>of alternate moves with there lines is concerned.
>
>A few questions:
>
>(1) If other programs offer this same feature, how do these chess engines
>produce the alternate moves and lines? Differently from the way the first move
>and it's line is produced?
>
>(2) If a chess-playing program were optimized to display multiple lines, would
>the search algorithms and position evaluation code be any different from those
>of a chess engine optimized for one move [and it's line] only?
>
>(3) If an engine is not optimized for this application, how much will the engine
>performance be handicapped if it is forced to display alternate moves and their
>lines?
>
>There may not be any simple answers to these questions?  : (
>
>My motive for asking these questions is obtain preliminary information which I
>might use for an idea, having to do with trees of "best move sequences," I would
>like to think more about.
>
>Bob D.


I wonder if it can display *some* information about alternate lines at almost no
cost...

Clearly, showing the PV and the score for each alternate line costs a lot.  But
what if it just showed whatever it already had on hand?  It should have *at
least* a 2nd-best and 3rd-best (etc.) first move, assuming there are alternate
legal moves ... right?

I think I'd willingly trade off the completeness of the current implementation
for the superior performance of my proposed behavior.



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