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Subject: Re: root move ordering

Author: Gerd Isenberg

Date: 05:52:44 09/23/04

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On September 22, 2004 at 17:15:38, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On September 22, 2004 at 15:57:34, martin fierz wrote:
>
>>i have a question about root move ordering: my engine currently generates a
>>random root move order, and then orders every move that ever fails high to the
>>top of the list, with previous best moves slowly going down in the list again.
>>
>>how do you order your root move list? by number of nodes to refute? or by
>>something different?
>>
>>cheers
>>  martin
>
>Initially I do a q-search after making each root move, and use this score to
>order the moves at the root.  If I am pondering I make sure that the move from
>the PV is put first of course.
>
>After each iteration, I re-order the move list keeping the best move first, and
>ordering the rest based on the size of the sub-tree (number of nodes) each
>produced when it was searched.

I do that in a similar way.

Imagine following scenario:

There is a safe repetition line with move X with a shallow subtree.
There are one or more alternatives Y,Z oscillating around zero with huge
subtrees.

At iteration i, X becomes best, because Y,Z and all others are < zero.
Next iteration, Y becomes better.
At i+2 Y is still > 0, but Z becomes better.
Now at iteration i+3 Z fails low less zero after a huge time.

What is better now?

a) Try next moves only based on their sub-tree size, with the possible problem
that all other moves except X fail to improve >= zero and X due to it's shallow
subtree is searched lately - or even worse with rare search time - not at all.

b) Trying Y which was previously best, and had a big subtree too.
X as pre previous best is tried after Y and Z.

c) To remember that there was a safe draw line two iterations before and to try
X before Z and others with an improved window?

I like option C). But of course one has to distinguish zero scores from real
draw scores by backing up some flags.



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