Author: José Carlos
Date: 07:39:42 04/26/04
Go up one level in this thread
On April 26, 2004 at 06:31:58, Tord Romstad wrote:
>Last week, there was an interesting discussion on this forum about which
>criterions should be used to decide whether or not to do a null move search.
>In an attempt to find out what works best for my engine, I played a self-play
>tournament between four slightly different versions of my engine. The
>following pseudo-code explains the null-move criterions used by each of
>the four versions:
>
>/* Gothmog A: */
>int ok_to_do_nullmove() {
> if(in_check(SideToMove)) return 0;
> if(static_eval - value_of_biggest_hanging_piece(SideToMove) >= beta)
> return 1;
> return 0;
>}
>
>/* Gothmog B: */
>int ok_to_do_nullmove() {
> if(in_check(SideToMove)) return 0;
> if(static_eval - value_of_biggest_hanging_piece(SideToMove)
> + value_of_biggest_hanging_piece(Opponent) >= beta)
> return 1;
> return 0;
>}
>
>/* Gothmog C: */
>int ok_to_do_nullmove() {
> if(in_check(SideToMove)) return 0;
> else return 1;
>}
>
>Gothmog D is similar to Gothmog C, except that when the remaining depth
>is 4 plies or more, a null move search with the depth reduced to zero
>is done before the real null move search, and the real null move search
>is avoided if the zero-depth search fails low.
>
>The criterion in Gothmog A is the one I have always used in the public
>versions of Gothmog. Our discussion last week seemed to indicate that
>most others use the simpler criterion in Gothmog C.
>
>In my tournament, I all four versions face each other 50 times. The
>results:
>
> Gothmog A Gothmog B Gothmog C Gothmog D Sum
>Gothmog A XXXX 26.5 31.0 29.5 87.0/150
>Gothmog B 23.5 XXXX 30.5 26.0 80.0/150
>Gothmog C 19.0 19.5 XXXX 31.5 70.0/150
>Gothmog D 20.5 24.0 18.5 XXXX 63.0/150
>
>It is interesting that the version with the most restrictive criterion
>achieves the highest score. This confirms my growing suspicion that
>recursive null move pruning doesn't work nearly as well as most people
>believe, and that it might be a good idea to make an effort to reduce
>its use as much as possible. I will try to experiment with even more
>restrictive criterions (perhaps static_eval-biggest_hanging >= beta+margin)
>and see whether that improves the strength further.
>
>The number of games is of course still not sufficiently big to make any
>definitive conclusions. If I find the time, I will add more games and
>more versions to the tournament.
>
>Tord
An interesting experiment, of course. But I think your conditions are rather
different from 'most' programs. I mean:
- You allow any number of null moves in a row (most programs don't do even
two)
- You do pruning and reductions that are not public domain
This is important because your results mean: 'in a non-standard null move
implementation (where you try more null move searches than most others) and with
a lot of heavy pruning and reductions (I assume they're heavy according to your
posts here and the high depths Gothmog gets) and in a MTD(f) root search,
limiting null move application seems to benefit". This conclusion is, apart from
interesting of course, very intuitive.
Thanks for the data. You sure inspired many others to do similar tests (I'll
do when I have time).
José C.
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