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Subject: Maximum search depth

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 17:37:11 02/26/04


I have a question for chess programmers.

I think most engines have a maximum search depth (most that I have seen anyway).
The only one I've heard of that doesn't have a maximum depth is Steven Edwards
program Symbolic.

I was wondering if there would be any advantage to having no maximum search
depth. If you could, for instance, dynamically allocate more space to continue
searching deeper, and it would cost you very little (mostly pre-allocated in
non-time-critical parts, in between moves, or whenever), would you even want to
do that? Or is there really no advantage to be gained there? It doesn't seem
like you would miss much if you cut off your qsearch at 64 plies.

On the other hand, are there any practical disadvantages to having no search
depth limit? I could see a potential situation where the qsearch explodes.

My guess is that it's probably not a big deal to have a limit, since you might
only cut off some very, very deep qsearch nodes, but a hard cutoff like that
seems to be a little hackish, and not entirely correct to me.



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