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Subject: Re: Mate in 30

Author: Scott Gasch

Date: 17:47:14 09/06/04

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On September 06, 2004 at 15:07:00, Stuart Cracraft wrote:

>[D] 5n2/B3K3/2p2Np1/4k3/7P/3bN1P1/2Prn1P1/1q6 w - - 0 0
>
>Anyone can get this besides Ed?
>
>Please post your search times.

This is an interesting position.  I saw it on Ed's "Programmer Stuff" page a
while back and I read his explaination.  To paraphrase, Ed usually only
considers checks in the first few plies of the qsearch.  However when a side in
check only has one or two legal evasions he considers checks more deeply in that
line.

When I added the same kind of rule to my engine it solved this position
instantly.  However I found some degenerate cases where this rule caused the
search tree to explode... there were tons of long check, reply, check, reply
lines in qsearch.  My solution was to keep the spirit of the idea but tune it
back a little.  The result?  My engine no longer finds this mate in 30 in a
reasonable amount of time.

I always wondered how people who allow checks very deep in the qsearch avoid
having it over-fire.  It's been so long that I can't remember what position I
found as a counter-example to this rule but it was an ECM test position and
around #150 I think.

Scott



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