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

Author: Stefano Gemma

Date: 07:53:16 05/26/04

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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?

I've used an recursive-iterative deepening. I try to explain in my poor english.
At any N plyes i've applyed iterative deepening as for the root. Suppose to
start with 2 plies. The next iterations you should search 4 then 6 then 8 plies
etc, form the root. But, when you're searching 8 plies depth, and you are at a
position located at ply 2, why don't use iterative deepening starting from ply
2, instead to do a full search of the remaining 6 plies? So i've tried to
consider positions at ply 2 (and 4 and 6...) as they were at the root, and start
a search to ply 4, then 6, then 8. Sometimes works better, sometimes worse...

I have tried different schemas, in Raffaela. The best seems the schema 2-4. You
increment the iterative deepening by 2 plies (one chess move by colour) and, for
any ply, you make an iterative deepening with increment 4. In some position, 2-2
was better.

I've abandoned this idea, for now, because i'm working on a new engine and i've
little time for my hobby, but i think that could be interesting.

Ciao!!!

Stefano Gemma



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