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Subject: Re: Opinions requested -- what to do when qsearch ends in checkmate...

Author: Ricardo Gibert

Date: 05:21:33 07/25/03

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On July 25, 2003 at 08:16:43, Uri Blass wrote:

>On July 25, 2003 at 03:21:33, Ricardo Gibert wrote:
>
>>On July 25, 2003 at 02:41:22, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>
>>>Now, a qsearch ending in checkmate may or may not really be a checkmate. After
>>>all, we only tried certain moves and it could very well be that the checkmate
>>>could be avoided.
>>>
>>>So, the burning question is...
>>>What should we do when the qsearch ends in a mate?
>>>There are lots of alternatives, from the primitive "return a mate" to "send a
>>>danger signal up the tree and let the regular search deal with it" to
>>>"extending" to...
>>>
>>>What is your favorite choice and why?
>>
>>You can second guess any score coming from qsearch. Not just mate. There is
>>little practical difference between losing a significant amount of material and
>>getting mated. I say be primitive. The qsearch already consumes too many nodes
>>as it is.
>
>I do not think that being primitive is better and checks in the qsearch helped a
>lot of programs to improve their playing strength.
>
>Uri

Checks in the qsearch is fine. The issue is whether or not to trust a checkmate
score from the qsearch.



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