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Subject: Re: not using nullmove? [generalized null move]

Author: Bruce Cleaver

Date: 04:49:56 02/15/04

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On February 14, 2004 at 22:43:19, Russell Reagan wrote:

>On February 14, 2004 at 20:15:58, Bruce Cleaver wrote:
>
>>"Why not use a logarithmic scale based on the difference between the best
>>possible move and the move under consideration?"
>>
>>Ron Rivest (he is the "R" in the RSA encryption algorithm) wrote a chess
>>algorithm called min-max approximation, which computes the first derivative
>>(really!!) of the score's change as a means to shape the search.  It has
>>somewhat the same flavor as your idea.
>>
>>It is really beautiful, but has two flaws:  it is a best-first searcher
>>(therefore exponential in memory), and heavily involves floating-point calcs.
>>The first objection can be overcome in the standard way, but not the second.
>
>Why can't the use of floating point calculations be overcome?


The use of floating point is intrinsic to the algorithm, involving
exponentiation & division.  IF you mean some sort of processor substitiution or
hardware trick to speed up FP calcs, well that might be possible.

You really ought to read the paper, Rivest had a beautiful idea.



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