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Subject: Re: Iterative deepening -- Why add exactly one ply?

Author: Peter Fendrich

Date: 06:21:24 05/25/04

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On May 25, 2004 at 07:59:33, Tord Romstad wrote:

>In all implementations of iterative deepening I have seen, the search depth
>is always incremented by exactly one ply between each iteration.  Is there any
>reason to believe that this is optimal?  Has anybody tried other increments?
>
>I am now running some tests with an increment of 3/4 of a ply.  So far, the
>results don't seem very different from the usual 1 ply increment.  If it turns
>out that increments different from 1 ply are no worse, this could perhaps be
>useful in time management.  The engine could use 1 ply increments most of the
>time, but occasionally add only half a ply if just a small amount of the
>allocated thinking time is left.
>
>Any thoughts about this?
>
>Tord

I've tried various increments but couldn't find anything better than 1 ply if
the same is used during the whole game. I never thought about time management,
though. Probably there is an optimal way of varying increments during the game
and adapt it to the current situation. I suppose it could be set both above and
beneath 1 ply.

Later on I will test if it's possible to automatically optimise search paramters
and this is certainly one candidate for a search paramter!
/Peter




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