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Subject: Re: Instability thing...

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 08:09:26 09/18/04

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On September 18, 2004 at 04:05:38, Sune Fischer wrote:

>
>I decided to try out the triangular PV thing Bob
>speaks so highly of, to see if it improves move ordering...
>
>I was careful to terminate the PV on all exact scores - of course.
>Still I was getting illegal moves in the PV.
>
>It turned out to be a hash/nullmove problem.
>
>See, in the hash I adjust the window down on UPPER bounds, ie.
>something like:
> if (flag==UPPER && score<beta)
>    beta = score;

Are you doing PVS?  If so you won't do this a dozen times during a long search,
most likely.  But I do this in Crafty as well, and it doesn't _ever_ get illegal
moves in the PV.


>
>The idea is that if we know the score is in the interval [x,y]
>then there is no reason to search with a window of [x,y+z].
>It's a common trick I believe.
>
>Unfortunately, the search will occasionally fail high on the new beta, in my
>case it was a nullmove that failed-high.
>
>That's clearly contradictive with what the hash just told us so
>it doesn't actually make any sense, but apparently it happens anyway
>(instability?).
>
>Now the score at the previous node might be an exact value (or a fail high later
>on), and the PV will now be concatenated from an old search branch.
>

That can't happen.  You don't update the PV on a fail high, ever.  Only if score
is > alpha and < beta...





>
>I can't see that I am doing anything wrong.
>Perhaps adjusting beta is just not a good idea?
>
>-S.



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