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Subject: Re: null move efficiency

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 20:52:59 04/19/04

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On April 19, 2004 at 20:38:47, Mike Siler wrote:

>My program tries a null move search if
>
>1. it's not the endgame
drop that condition. just do not do a nullmove when either side is in a pawn
endgame.

>2. it's not a PV node
how do you know this in advance?

You mean when beta = infinite ?

>3. it didn't just make a null move

that's a stupid condition. i consider double nullmove a correct way to search.
i would change it in that case to allowing 2 nullmoves in a row is allowed, but
the 3d isn't.

>4. it's not in check and wasn't in check on the previous ply

Though perhaps cool to solve some win at chess tactics 1 ply sooner, so finding
it in 1 microsecond instead of 2, i would drop that too in order to search
deeper.

Do not nullmove when side to move is not in check.

>5. the remaining depth isn't so small that the reduced depth would take it into
>the qsearch

I see no problems with that. In fact this is the biggest profit you get in short
term from nullmove! So why not doing a nullmove here?

>
>In general, only around 65% of the null move searches my program performs result
>in a cut-off. Is this normal or do other programs tend to do better (and how)?
>According to Ed Schröder's page, Rebel gets around 93-95%. I've tried the
>recommendations listed there but they didn't help much.
>Michael

Rebel is doing also checks in qsearch i assume, so that will make the mainsearch
a lot better and improve any % anywhere.

I didn't know Rebel nowadays combines dubious forward pruning with nullmove.

Is there any mention of that done by Ed?



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