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Subject: Re: Why bother with NPS??

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 20:01:52 09/09/03

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On September 09, 2003 at 18:32:42, Mike Siler wrote:

>That logic is great when you just look at searching to depth x and x+1. During a
>game though, there could be many places where the program runs out of time with
>only a few tens of thousands of nodes left to search. A small increase in NPS
>would allow the program to go a ply deeper in these situations.
>
>Of course, there will probably be few of these situations in each game, but an
>occassional extra ply of searching is undoubtedly helpful.
>
>Michael

This is true, but I'm not sure how valuable this will be in reality. If you
speed up your program by a non-significant amount, then with smart time
management you might be able to squeeze out an extra ply a few moves during the
game.

What are the chances that those extra plies will a) produce a new best move, and
b) that new best move will be so much better that it will alter the game result?
I'd guess you'd gain maybe half a point in 100 games.

There are many other things you could do to improve your program by far greater
margins IMO.



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