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

Author: Vasik Rajlich

Date: 08:57:33 05/27/04

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On May 27, 2004 at 11:22:40, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On May 27, 2004 at 06:39:23, Vasik Rajlich wrote:
>
>>On May 26, 2004 at 13:49:38, Tord Romstad wrote:
>>
>>>On May 26, 2004 at 13:34:23, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>I have used "IID" for years, but in a very restricted way, namely to handle the
>>>>case along the PV where I have no hash move.  I've never tried it _everywhere_
>>>>before, so have no data.  But I intend to try to see if it is something that
>>>>could work, or if it is a waste...
>>>
>>>I am fairly sure you will find that _everywhere_ is a waste.  It is probably
>>>not worth doing near the leaf, you have a hash table move to search, or when
>>>a fail-low is most likely.  Perhaps you should also use a somewhat bigger
>>>reduction factor than in your "along-the PV IID".
>>>
>>>Note that it could also be interesting to look for good ways to make use of the
>>>return value of the internal search.  It gives a reasonably reliable estimate
>>>of the value of a full-depth search, and can be useful as an ingredient in
>>>pruning tricks.  The most obvious (and entirely risk-free) case is when the
>>>reduced-depth search returns a mate score.  When this happens, it is clearly
>>>not necessary to do a full-depth search.
>>>
>>>Tord
>>
>>Yes, there is lots of room for playing with IID.
>>
>>Note that 95% of all nodes fail high in some way, so you can be pretty
>>aggressive.
>
>that sounds very high.

Ok - just checked - it's more like 93-94%, and I'm doing MTD (f).

>
>>The IID principle can also apply to some additional situations:
>
>>1) You have a hash move, but it's at depth-2 rather than depth-1. You can do
>>another IID layer in this case.
>
>In that case hashmoves works better of course.
>
>>2) Your fail-high hash move (for some engines the only possible kind of hash
>>move) fails low. Here you can do IID to get an alternative move.
>
>This is highly unlikely as your IID is at depth-i where i > 0.
>
>So most likely that hashmove is already from a position j >= depth - i, which
>makes IID a complete waste of your time.

I meant an IID where the move that already failed low is thrown out. You want
the second-best move at the reduced depth.

Usually, you will waste a few nodes this way of course. The idea is to avoid-the
worst case scenario - of doing a full search through a bunch of other moves,
before finding the fail-high move.

>
>>And - as Tord mentioned - an IID search can be turned into the final
>>reduced-depth search, based on its result.
>>Vas
>
>Depth reducing the current search?
>
>Sounds like a rather bad idea to me.

Well that's the million dollar question, isn't it?

Vas



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