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Subject: Re: DB and Singular Extensions

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 16:36:30 11/22/98

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On November 22, 1998 at 18:04:04, jonathan Baxter wrote:

>Can anyone send me an electronic version of the ICCA article by Hsu on
>Singular Extensions used in DB?
>
>Failing that, can someone give me a quick explanation? I understand
>that they extend moves that look substantially better than all other moves
>at a node. What I don't understand is that given the nature of alpha-beta
>search, often you don't know anything about the value of alternative moves....
>
>Thanks,
>
>Jon


briefly:

pv-singular move:  you search the first move at a node with the normal
window, and the remainder of the moves at that depty with a lowered (offset)
window (alpha-w, beta-w) where w is the singular margin.  If all those moves
fail low, the first move is "singular" since it is clearly better.  If any
one move fails high, you have to do the original test on the first move to
see if this new best is singular or not...  messy but understandable.

fh-singular move:  you search the first move at a node with the normal
window and get a fail high.  You first search the *remainder* of the moves
with the offset window, but to reduced depth (say D-2) to see if all of them
still fail low with the offset window.  If so, extend.  If not, do the same
check as in pv-singular.

The idea is that at a PV or fail-high node, you try to prove that the best
move is better than all other moves at that ply, by a significant margin.  No
"fail-low" node test has been formulated...

If that isn't clear, feel free to ask more...

Bob



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