Author: Andrew Wagner
Date: 16:28:36 06/15/04
I've heard it said before that it's not good to compare node counts between engines, and that node counts aren't a good indication of strength. So, I've been staying away from that a lot. The other day, I was chatting with my good friend Jaime Benito de Valle Ruiz. We see each other a lot on ICC and compare notes on our engines. We decided to play a fixed-depth game between our engines, to test eval strength. In the process of the game, he noticed that my node count was ridiculously higher than his. For example, in one position, where I was getting 277k nodes, he was getting like 11k. Other engines varied, but no more than about 50k nodes. So we started doing some tests. For him, he got a huge node reduction by using some sophisticated aspiration windows. So, my question is three-fold: 1.) Do most engines get a similarly large reduction in nodes by using aspiration windows? 2.) What other techniques reduce node counts at a fixed depth? 3.) To what extent are node counts reliable for determining engine strength?
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