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Subject: Re: Instability thing...

Author: Richard Pijl

Date: 00:21:41 09/19/04

Go up one level in this thread


On September 18, 2004 at 23:57:32, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On September 18, 2004 at 18:50:22, Richard Pijl wrote:
>
>>On September 18, 2004 at 11:28:45, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>
>>>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.
>>>
>>
>>It may be less important when doing fail-hard. Chances that the upperbound
>>equals the real score is lower with fail-hard.
>>Richard.
>>
>
>I'm not sure why it would matter.  You should fail high, relax the upper bound,
>and get the _same_ value back except this time it will be an exact score...
>That is pretty normal to get a fail high and then on the re-search, getting the
>same score again since the upper bound and true score were identical...

Are you doing a research on a fail high in an innernode (when the beta was
adjusted)? If you do, you're right. It won't matter.
What I meant was, that with fail soft chances are bigger that a stored
upperbound equals the true score as it can return a score outside the ab window.

>This doesn't cause oddball PVs in Crafty however, even though I see it on
>occasion...  (see the identical score/upperbound problem, but no illegal moves
>in my PV ever).  Nor did it ever happen when I used true fail-soft years back...

I don't think adjusting bounds will cause anomalies in the PV other than perhaps
short pv's (when doing beta=score and no research) as the fail high will
truncate the pv.
Richard.




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