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Subject: Re: singular extension

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 08:15:11 09/15/04

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On September 15, 2004 at 10:32:53, martin fierz wrote:

>On September 15, 2004 at 09:53:53, Stuart Cracraft wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>Anyone know of some code somewhere that implements
>>at least part (or all) of the originally described
>>singular extension and/or any modifications to it that
>>have proven worthwhile (if any)?
>>
>>I am curious what mediocre (or better) results people
>>have gotten with singular extension. Originally Anantharaman
>>hypothesized that it wouldn't be good at the slower
>>speeds of most programs at the time and would require
>>fast speeds to show effect.  Has this proven true or
>>false in the intervening 15 years?
>>
>>Is singular extension now generally discredited as a
>>non-reproducible singularity in and of itself?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Stuart
>
>AFAIK, SE is 'interesting' in the sense that it does enable programs to solve
>certain positions faster, but of course you pay a price. and again AFAIK, nobody
>is really using it these days, because the price seems too high to pay. i.e. in
>games it's no improvement.
>
>just because the deep blue team used SE doesn't mean it's any good. remember,
>they also decided not to use null-move, which was an established concept by
>then.
>
>cheers
>  martin

As far as I know Deep Sjeng is using singular extensions and the same for Ferret
but not in the same way as deeper blue.

I did not try singular extensions.
I think that most programmers did not try singular extensions so they cannot
claim that in games there is no improvement.

I do not blame them and of course if you do not expect singular extensions to
help then it is a reason not to try them and to try different stuff.

I do not expect singular extensions to help if they are
used in the same way that was used by deeper blue and it is a good reason not to
try it.
It does not mean that they cannot help if you have better conditions when to use
them but I think that at the level of weak programs it is a bad idea to try
singular extensions and it is better to try pruning ideas.

I think that the main problem of chess programs is that they search too many
illogical lines.

Uri



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