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Subject: Re: Null move question

Author: Omid David Tabibi

Date: 09:48:05 08/02/03

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On August 02, 2003 at 12:15:18, Sune Fischer wrote:

>On August 02, 2003 at 11:12:29, Tony Werten wrote:
>
>>>To summarize, a score can be considered "exact" only if it has been achieved
>>>independent of alpha and beta bounds. This is the case only if we are at a leaf
>>>node with full evaluation, or other node with alpha < value < beta.
>>
>>Or when a checkmate score is returned or a drawscore or ....
>
>This is not true.
>
>Consider a case where beta<=0, the first move you search bring back a draw score
>(say, forced repetition).
>Now you fail high without checking the rest, but you could have had a mating
>move or another winning line you didn't search. So it will just be a lower
>bound.

Again, the decision was based on the bounds, so it was by no means an exact
score. When you encounter a threefold repetition, you may store it as exact
score in the current node, but when you return 0 to the father, you treat it
there just as a normal score, so if it is not between alpha and beta, you cannot
store it as exact.

(Looking at my code I see that I don't store repetition draws in the hash table
at all, I have commented it out, but I'm not sure why :)



>
>Mate scores are another matter I think.
>
>>Sorry if I tell you something new, this is old stuff.
>>
>>When not doing any extensions ( not realistic but anyway) the values returned
>>from the last 2 plies from normal search are exact. (As was published 15 years
>>ago)
>
>I don't believe that, and I think my example above shows it.
>
>-S.
>
>>Tony
>>



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