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Subject: Re: shredder 8 and weird PVs? (sandro?)

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 09:31:17 01/19/04

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On January 19, 2004 at 04:57:01, William Penn wrote:

>On January 18, 2004 at 23:19:26, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On January 18, 2004 at 23:10:55, Bob Durrett wrote:
>>
>>>On January 18, 2004 at 22:39:23, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On January 18, 2004 at 05:53:49, martin fierz wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>i just received my brand-new shredder 8. when using it for analysis in chessbase
>>>>>(which is in fact the only thing i use it for), it often gives PVs which are
>>>>>completely ridiculous - the first few moves are ok, then one side blunders a
>>>>>piece according to the PV, but the evaluation of that line doesn't show it.
>>>>>looks like there is a PV bug in shredder 8? is there any fix for this? i find it
>>>>>very annoying...
>>>>>
>>>>>cheers
>>>>>  martin
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I have heard that Shredder (and others) try to reconstruct the PV by probing the
>>>>hash table at the end of the search.  This simply does not work with any degree
>>>>of accuracy.  IE suppose you search and reach position A while searching the PV.
>>>> Later, at very shallow depths, you reach position A again and
>>>>overwrite it with different "best moves" depending on the depth remaining,
>>>>extensions triggered, etc.  Now when you try to recover the PV from the hash
>>>>table, you get the right position A, but the wrong best move.  And then the PV
>>>>looks funny.  It doesn't happen every time, but if the PV is reconstructed
>>>>enough this way, it happens often enough.  I tried this _years_ ago and ran into
>>>>the same problem.  Never saw it in debugging.  Saw it regularly when kibitzing
>>>>PVs on ICC.  :)
>>>>
>>>>I now do it the correct way, backing the PV up along with the score...
>>>>
>>>>Remember that this is speculation since I have never seen Shredder's source. But
>>>>recovering the PV in this way is simply going to produce errors, and there is
>>>>nothing that can be done about it.  The first move and score will be correct, of
>>>>course.  But beyond that, who knows, and the farther out, the greater the
>>>>probability of a bogus move.
>>>
>>>There was much discussion here about this problem with Shredder 7.04.  You would
>>>have thought that this would have been corrected it for version 8.0 but maybe
>>>we'll have to wait until Shredder 8.04.  : (
>>>
>>>Bob D.
>>
>>
>>He might not want to worry with it.  It isn't a tough change, but it is a
>>change...
>
>I have seen it suggested that he may prefer to leave it that way to hide his
>exact search algorithm, so that others can't copy it. It might be something
>special, unique, that nobody else knows about (yet). Possible? Or just verbiage?
>WP

Certainly a possibility.  Showing the _real_ PV tends to expose part of your
search strategy.  Showing partial, incomplete and sometimes bogus PVs makes that
harder to understand. :)




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