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Subject: Re: Instability thing...

Author: Sune Fischer

Date: 08:28:45 09/18/04

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On September 18, 2004 at 11:09:26, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>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.

I haven't looked but I guess you are doing something equivalent to what Richard
suggested with beta = score+1.

Small but important difference. :)

>>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...

The PV is not updated on that node either, it's updated above at the parent node
because here the FH-score will fall within the window.

And of course that will result in a random clipping of the PV.

This doesn't seem possible to prevent a 100%, because how do we guarantee that
the new search will produce the same score as the old one when the hash has been
changed meanwhile?

-S.



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