Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 16:25:46 01/30/04
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On January 30, 2004 at 18:27:31, William H Rogers wrote: >Hi Bob >In the chess program that I wrote you select the ply depth that you want to >play. It will only search to that depth and then return the best move that it >found. It will use extensions, ie. quiesent and sometime will search several >plys deeper. In the begining, I had a command to stop the search no matter what >ply depth you were at and return the best move so far but it kept getting >activated by accident so I removed it. I know of no program that will search to >a deeper ply depth than what a operator sets in the begining of the program. Now >setting the time per move is another question, most programs will search until >either the max time has been reached or the operator stops the search. >Some programs will continue to search a little deeper even though the time limit >is passed. You can see this happen all the time in tourneyments. >Bill Thanks for your comments and thanks to Bob Hyatt too. I guess what this is all about is that I do not recall having read anything here at CCC dedicated to the special problems of those unfortunate engines who are faced with a user command to limit the ply depth to a certain depth. Of course, we all know that most or all commercial programs do offer that option. I wondered whether or not the engine should be programmed to "think" differently in this special case. The more I ponder [pardon the pun] this issue, the more it seems to me that "business as usual" is not the right way to go. Sadly, I do not know the right technical questions to ask. My guess is that most or all engines simply stop working as soon as the "real" PV reaches the required ply depth. It just seems to me to be wrong if that's the way it is for most engines. Bob D.
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