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Subject: Re: Pondering methods

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:20:31 03/29/04

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On March 29, 2004 at 09:27:52, Zheng Zhixian wrote:

>Peter Berger wrote in a thread below
>
>"Usually programs assume the second move of the PV as being played, and then
>think as if it were their own move in the meantime. If the expected move gets
>played indeed, some (loads of at times ) time has been saved - else the time is
>lost (despite some potentially useful entries in the hashtable).
>
>Another approach ( inferior) is to just think as if you were the opponent during
>ponder and rely on savings from the hashtable you achieved -you get some useful
>entries in the hashtable anyway, but this can't be an optimal strategy IMHO."
>
>I gather from various responses that the first approach is better if you can
>correctly guess the right response more than 50% of the time. Could someone
>explain why?
>
>Are there other pondering methods besides these 2?

If you predict right 50%, then 1/2 of the time (or more) you save time.  How can
any other approach do that well?  IE if you ponder 2 moves equally, you _never_
save more than 1/2 of the time/  3 moves = 1/3, etc...




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