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Subject: Re: How I Learned to Stop Hating 141

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 05:46:08 09/03/04

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On September 03, 2004 at 07:08:48, Andrew Platt wrote:

>On September 03, 2004 at 00:43:27, Stuart Cracraft wrote:
>
>>So today I find out that my recapture is bad. It must be. Bob said so.
>>
>>I take 1 minute to reimplement it to be "extend on 2nd capture on the same
>>square in a row" because I heard someone else talking about that's the
>>way they do it and got a surprise a minute after that.
>>
>>The result is that Qxf4 for Win-at-Chess comes into view
>>in 98 seconds and holds after having been missed after seemingly
>>endless runtime with the old bad recapture in or out. Of course
>>it is nothing like the 13,000 nodes that Tord (was it?) solves
>>141 in. Perhaps we should have a contest for who solves 141 in
>>the fewest moves. He would surely win. It takes me 24 million.
>>I admire a search that is so directed in so few nodes. Surely
>>we pay homage to Berliner with it, eh? Retire in peace in Florida
>>and then two category 4 storms hit. Unlucky fellow.
>
>Congrats but I seriously think there must be something strange if mate threat
>extensions don't help. I don't have recapture extensions (yet) but the mate
>threat brought it down from a 13 ply search to an 11 ply one. It's still way too
>expensive because the tree is very large at that point and with the alpha-beta
>window being wide open for the mate score it takes forever.
>
>Right now I'm focussing on why it doesn't get it sooner; after that I'll
>implement re-capture extensions.
>
>I think that looking at checks in the quiescent search would have helped me a
>little. When analyzing the trace files I see the null move dropping straight
>into quiescent search with a mate (e.g. a null move after Qxf4 Bxf4 Rxh5 - null
>- Rh8#). However, all it does is the stand pat evaluation which causes a beta
>cutoff.
>
>It would be too expensive for me to really deal with checks in qsearch because I
>don't want to have to generate the legal capture modes. All I do is bomb out of
>it if I see the King being captured. However, it might not be too expensive to
>generate the legal moves at the first ply of qsearch if we're in check to catch
>these conditions. I might try that and see if it causes testsuites to slow down
>much.
>
>Andy.

You do not need to do it.
If you extend every check by 1 ply in correct way there is 0 chance to get
position when the king is in check in the first ply of the qsearch.

Uri



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