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Subject: Re: futility pruning?

Author: Tony Werten

Date: 01:50:49 11/10/03

Go up one level in this thread


On November 10, 2003 at 04:30:16, Uri Blass wrote:

>On November 10, 2003 at 02:27:53, Tony Werten wrote:
>
>>On November 09, 2003 at 07:40:38, scott farrell wrote:
>>
>>>On November 09, 2003 at 04:55:40, Matthias Gemuh wrote:
>>>
>>>>On November 09, 2003 at 03:53:24, Daniel Shawul wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>I do not remember if Ernst's paper said that you make the move first and then
>>>>>>decide if it is futile.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>If it did, then it's definitely killing all the interest of futility pruning at
>>>>>>depth 1!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The idea is to prune before you make the move. So you stay at depth==1, look at
>>>>>>the move, and say "hey, this move looks completely futile, let's ignore it!".
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    Christophe
>>>>>
>>>>>A futile move is futile before you make or after you make it.
>>>>>    before
>>>>>          mat_bal + move_gain + margin < alpha => futile move
>>>>>    after
>>>>>          mat_bal + margin < alpha => futile move
>>>>>Anyway my question is since you go directly to quiescent search
>>>>>(where stand pat cutoff of all futile moves occur) after making the move,
>>>>>we only saved ourselves "making of the futile moves".I can comprehend the
>>>>>extended futlity pruning but not this.For me as long as standing pat cut off
>>>>>is there , futility pruning at frontier is unnecessary,and if it is,it only
>>>>>saves the time to make and unmake futile moves.Where does the 60% tree shrinkage
>>>>>comes from?Please try to see where my proble is.
>>>>>
>>>>>Daniel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Your logic seems sound for me. We seem to save only
>>>>MakeMove() + UnmakeMove() + Evaluate().
>>>
>>>I think you are wrong, you save:
>>>
>>>MakeMove() + UnmakeMove() +alphaBeta()+ qSearch()+ stand-pat+ Evaluate().
>>>
>>>qsearch of course can be a few plies also.
>>
>>No, only when you were wrong. That's the whole point with futility pruning, it
>>only saves nodes when you were wrong.
>>
>>Normal: Make move, goto quiescence, eval>beta, cutoff. go back, unmake move.
>>
>>pruning: "eval" <alpha, skip.
>>
>>You save 1 make move, 1 function call, 1 eval and 1 unmake move but never a
>>node.
>
>It is because you have different definition of node than me.

No, you have a different definition than us :)

>I have nodes++ only when I make moves.
>
>Makemove is for me something expensive as I explained in another post.

That wasn't really my point. My point was that if you count a skipped move the
same as a made move, you should get the same count. The only time it is lower is
when you were wrong.

So you basicly can't search 60% less nodes though it's possible to spend 60%
less time.

Counting the skipped move seems logical, otherwise I have some more fantastic
pruning algorithms with no sideeffects. "Never count positions on the last ply"
is one of them wich saves over 70% of your nodes.

Tony

>
>Uri



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