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Subject: Re: Instability thing...

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:34:30 09/19/04

Go up one level in this thread


On September 19, 2004 at 03:21:41, Richard Pijl wrote:

>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.

Again, I can't see how that would hurt.  If I get a score outside the root AB
window, and it gets backed up to the root, I have to re-search with a wider
window, which will catch those "edge" conditions.


>
>>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.

A fail high can't possibly terminate the PV in a correct search.  You can't have
a PV that ends on a fail high, as it is illegal, except for mtd(f) searches
which I assume we are not talking about,.




>Richard.



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