Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Hashing pawn structures - how?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:46:42 11/01/98

Go up one level in this thread


On November 01, 1998 at 13:47:18, Ernst A. Heinz wrote:

>On November 01, 1998 at 12:56:12, Inmann Werner wrote:
>>
>>you are right. my percentage is about 50% in normal game. I have to think about
>>it.
>>On the one hand, if I make a hit, the evaluation is extremly fast. On the other
>>hand, if I only hash the pawns, I get much more hits, but have more to do in
>>much more difficult in evaluation, because good king standing and rook standing
>>depends on pawn structure.
>>When I have a little time, I try both and look whats really faster.
>
>Werner,
>
>All pieces that tend to move around *frequently* will greatly hurt the hit rate
>of your Pawn hashing. Therefore, I recommend that you never include any major
>or minor pieces therein. The Kings, however, are different "animals" which can
>safely be hashed together with the Pawns as long as they must stay behind safe
>shelters in the middlegame. "DarkThought" drops them from the Pawn hashing
>*dynamically* as soon as King safety does not matter anymore.
>
>=Ernst=


I did this in Cray Blitz, but believe that the current scheme I use in Crafty
is far better.  With the king included my hash hits were in the 90% range or
so, while with it out, 99.9% is common.  I looked at what I was doing, and
it was mainly king safety related.  And the king safety with the king at g1
is no better/worse than the king safety with the king at h1 or h2, if you only
look at pawns.  I now do normal pawn scoring, then king safety on *both* sides
of the board, and store all this with just the pawn hash signature.  When I want
to evaluate king safety, I look at which side the king is on and start with that
raw pawn structure score around the king... and then factor in other things
(like is there a queen, how close are the pieces, are there open files with
rooks on them around the king) and so forth..

I now get 99.9% hash hits which covers the king safety pawn structure...  and
there's no loss in accuracy of any kind...



This page took 0.01 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.