Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Rebel trick one margin questions

Author: Ed Schröder

Date: 02:34:23 01/04/03

Go up one level in this thread


On January 02, 2003 at 08:21:51, Uri Blass wrote:

>This trick is from Rebel programming stuff:
>
>MARGIN = 3.00                              // 3 pawns safe-guard value
>  MARGIN + highest hanging piece value       // Queen=900, Rook=500 etc.
>  MARGIN + 9.00 when own_king_was_in_check_before_make_move
>  MARGIN + 6.00 when the opponent can promote the next ply
>  if (SCORE-MARGIN > BETA)                   -> return TRUE
>  else return FALSE

>1)Why score-margin>beta?

Because it works.


>I think that score+margin<alpha is more logical.

Try it.



>If the score of the side to move is already bigger than beta I return beta
>except special cases(like a case when the king is in check)
>
>2)What is the maximal value that margin can get?

27 as you already indicate.


>Am I right to assume that it can get maximal value of 3+9+9+6=27 if
>the side to move gave check in the previous move and the side to move can
>promote and the side to move can capture a queen?
>
>3)Am I right to assume that the only risk here are cases when there is mate or
>cases when the evaluation is changed by more than 3 pawns?

I think you should just try the idea, it either works or not, if not you maybe
should tune some values to make it work. There are always risks, a good testset
with some 100-150 tactical positions will reveal it soon enough if this
particular trick works for you.



>I think that the main risk is cases of mate when there is no check before it.
>
>I tested static margin of 12 pawns in the gcp test suite and found some
>positions that there were positions that were solved one ply later(using your
>full formula is possible but in that case I need to do some bigger changes in my
>source code).

No, no. A fixed value of 12 pawns is most dangerous, please stick to the
original formula.



>The first position is the following position
>
>[D]1k1r2r1/pp3p1p/B2q1n2/8/3Pb1p1/2Q5/PR3PPP/2B1R1K1 w - - 0 1
>
>Movei(with margin=12) found that Bxb7 is winning at depth 8 so it missed Bf4
>that is even better and needed to wait to depth 9.

No suprise it doesn't work.

Ed


>Uri



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.