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Subject: Re: questions?

Author: Harald Lüßen

Date: 16:54:53 04/08/04

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On April 08, 2004 at 12:22:15, Ed Schröder wrote:

>On April 08, 2004 at 09:04:15, Harald Lüßen wrote:
>
>>On April 08, 2004 at 07:10:29, Daniel Shawul wrote:
>>
>>>Hi
>>>Here are some questions
>>>
>>>2.In Ed's paper there are some tricks done at horizon.
>>>   trick one     if(score - (margin + largest hanging piece) > beta)
>>>                        don't do quiescence
>>>   trick two     if(score - 900 > beta)
>>>                        don't do quiescence
>>>   My question is every body does
>>>              score=eval()
>>>              if(score > beta)
>>>                   don't do quiescence;
>>>   So i don't see how the tricks work?
>
>
>>His alpha is our beta and vice versa.
>
>Really?

Sometimes. I explained this sentence with two models of
search algorithms, mine and another one that would produce
this confusing alta bepha. :-) My assumption that you use
a search algorithm like the second example was wrong but
the effects are similar. Thank you and others for making
this clear. At least my explanation has helped the original
poster.

>If true I need to re-read some papers :)

No, no. You should _write_ more papers.

>To clarify, suppose an aspiration search with a 0.50 window and a best move with
>a 0.20 score then going to the next iteration I get a window of:
>
>ALPHA = -0.30
>BETA = 0.70

I know that our general understanding of the meaning of alpha
and beta is the same. I get the same window (at root level).

>Your comment suggests:
>
>ALPHA = 0.70
>BETA = -0.30

No, what I meant and could not explain clear enough is:
One ply deeper in a recursive negamax-like-search we get
alpha = -0.70 and beta = 0.30. Many chess programmers are
used to this kind of strange (anti-)symmetry. Are you
aware of this different use of vocabulary? I like the idea
that you should include an explanation of your search
and use of alpha beta and the difference to negamax/PVS
in your very interesting writing.

Harald



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