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Subject: Idea for reduction and pruning

Author: Joachim Rang

Date: 01:14:53 07/17/03


I have an idea for another form of reductions and/or pruning.

If a move sacrifices a piece for nothing or not more than a pawn reduce depth if
the following criteria are met:

1. Your own king safety and mobility doesn't improve and the king safety and
mobility of the opponent doesn't get worse.

2. You don't get a passed pawn and you don't remove a passed pawn of your
opponent.

The idea is to distinguish between good (promising) and bad (stupid) sacrifices.
The assumption is that a good sacrifice does either change king safety or
mobility to your favor or does create or remove a passed pawn.

One can consider to make a complete cutoff of this subtree, if these criteria
are met even after another two or four plies.

To implement such a thing you need of course a good and detailed king safety and
mobility evaluation.

What do you think of this idea?

Is this already implemented in certain engines?
Is this a bad idea because it is too dangerous?
Is this unpracticable because too complicated to program or too much calculation
is needed to do this?

If you think that it is too dangerous please post some positions in which such a
reduction/cut-off could fail.

Note: Sacrifices which either change king safety or mobility to your favor or
give you a passed pawn or remove a passed pawn from your opponent are not
reduced. Are there good sacrifices which improve your position in other
criteria?

regards Joachim



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