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Subject: Re: King's Out : move ordering questions

Author: Bernd Nürnberger

Date: 04:45:19 04/01/04

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Hello Pat,

On March 31, 2004 at 19:49:22, Pat King wrote:

>On March 31, 2004 at 07:43:59, Bernd Nürnberger wrote:
>
>>(1)
>>[3 moves]
>> 8.   0:01.12      993512   0.00  Nc3 Nf6 d4 d5 Nf3 Bf5 Ne5 Ne4
>>[4 moves]
>> 8.   0:01.28     1088694   0.00  e4 Nc6 Nf3 e5 d4 Nxd4 Nxd4 h6
>
>When you say "3 history moves" and "4 history moves", I'm interpreting this as
>"I sort the first three or four quiet moves using the history table". I have two
>thoughts.

Yes, you got what I meant. Sorry for not putting this more clearly.

>
>a) I sort all quiet moves by the history table. It's probably a waste, but it's
>simpler.

Doing this strangely I get even more nodes (and still another different PV)
on the starting position:
 8.   0:01.38     1169525   0.00  d4 Nc6 e4 d5 exd5 Qxd5 Nf3 Be6
(?!)
Why does the amount of nodes go up, when the ordering should be better?
I am aware of that the heuristic is just a prediction that do not have to
be true, but should the prediction not be more accurate?
What parameters for increasing score (+ 1<<depth) and aging (at 64k nodes
do /8 on all from-to pairs) do you propose?

>b) If I chose to limit my sorting (which quite probably is a good idea) I
>wouldn't make decisions based on the starting position. Very few (I would say
>"no", but I always get in trouble with absolutes) chess engines are any good at
>openings with a pre-made "book".
That was just an example to illustrate. Propably the starting pos. is a bad
test pos., but I also tested other positions ...

>The two lines you present are not unreasonable for a chess engine with no book.
But is it reasonable that they are so much different for just sorting *one*
more move by history score. It varies very widely when altering move ordering!
Is this ok?

>
>>
>>(2)
>>[move ordering]
>You mention that you've implemented null move. I believe the proper place to put
>this is before even your hash move. This could seriously impact your cut rate.
>If you're not counting null move cutoffs as 'cuts', then I think you may have an
>apple and orange type problem when you compare yourself to other engines.
Strangly this do not change anything in my engine. Will try this more thourougly
when I have more time.  But why do the null move before hash table lookup.
Isn't it cheaper to place it after the hash lookup, because if I got a
hit (and I often got hits), null move will not be examined at all?!

>Glad to shed what feeble light I have on your problems :)
:)

Greets, Bernd



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