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Subject: Re: WAC 141 blowup

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 08:19:43 09/02/04

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On September 01, 2004 at 20:57:20, Jan K. wrote:

>>
>>                9     4.35  -1.01   1. Kf1 a5 2. Rxh5 gxh5 3. Rxh5 Re1+
>>                                    4. Kxe1 Nxh5 5. Qg5+ Kf8 6. Qh6+ Ke8
>>                                    7. Qh8+ Bf8 8. Qxh5
>>                9     4.82     +1   1. Qxf4!!
>>                9     5.07     +3   1. Qxf4!!
>>                9     5.50     +M   1. Qxf4!!
>>                9    52.17  Mat06   1. Qxf4 Bxf4 2. Rxh5 gxh5 3. Rxh5 Bh6
>>                                    4. Rxh6 Qh2+ 5. Kxh2 Kf8 6. Rh8#
>>              time=52.17  cpu=98%  mat=-1  n=85106981  fh=98%  nps=1.63M
>>
>
>hi, so it's alright(...) that it takes so long to find the mate? I thought that
>this is some bug of my search that i can finish depth 9 with winning score in 3
>seconds and then depth 10 with mate score in 45 seconds. Although I extend only
>1/2 ply for threat extension, here along with check extension it seems to blow
>up the search. :)

This is notmal.  You do a search with a very narrow window and alpha/beta prunes
away most deep mate branches.  But once you widen the search window to include
mates, bam.  This also happens in endgames where the hash table allows you to
search very deeply, pruning away variations where a pawn queens (the new queen
can't be forcibly be created until say ply=40, but once it is forced, all the
promotions at ply=10 and beyond suddenly can't be pruned based on score, and the
tree explodes.

It's an artifact of alpha/beta...





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