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Subject: Re: Hashing pawn structures - how?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 05:32:48 11/02/98

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On November 02, 1998 at 04:49:55, Ernst A. Heinz wrote:

>On November 01, 1998 at 23:46:42, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>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...
>
>We must be doing something right then because we also get more than 99%
>hit rates with the King factored in. :-)
>
>=Ernst=


how many entries?  IE I never paid attention to this hash number when we ran
on a 16gb machine because we used such rediculously large hash tables.  But if
you can get such a large hit percentage with pawns+kings, then the original idea
of pawns+kings+rooks ought to be pretty close, because even the king can walk
a long way in a 12 ply search...

however I generally run with 10mb pawn hash, which is something like 500K
entries, and don't ever see this number under 99% (integer truncation)...  I'd
think it has to be bigger to stick at 99% with kings factored in...???



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