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Subject: Re: Knowledge in Searching

Author: José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba

Date: 05:48:00 03/12/04

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On March 11, 2004 at 13:55:45, Bob Durrett wrote:

>
>A few days ago, someone was drawing a distinction between knowledge in
>evaluation and knowledge in searching.
>
>I am intrigued and very interested in knowing more about "knowledge in
>searching."  Some of the questions are:
>
>(1)  Is this commonly used or done in chess engines?
>
>(2)  What sort of knowledge would be used in or for searching, other than
>knowledge used in evaluation?
>
>(3)  How much can searching be improved by using knowledge in searching?
>
>(4)  Any other insights into this topic = ?
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Bob D.

When having to choose a move, it is a big waste to search all the branches of
the tree to the same depth, since most of them are extremely irrelevant (for
example blundering the queen). While (strong) human chess players are usually
extremely good at that, computers have no way to know a priori which moves are
not worth being searched.
The knowledge in search helps to disbalance the search tree, and when done
correctly it effectively searches relevant moves far deeper than irrelevant
ones.
Basically, all the pruning and extensions are search knowledge, as well as the
q-search policy. You can find all kind of exotic examples.
Some people have mentioned also knowledge in the move ordering, which is
critical as well (but I put it in another basket).
José.



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