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Subject: Re: MINMAX verses ALPHA-BETA

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 13:37:41 01/20/99

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On January 20, 1999 at 12:01:14, KarinsDad wrote:

>On January 20, 1999 at 10:08:15, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On January 19, 1999 at 20:20:48, Larry Griffiths wrote:
>>
>>>I ran my program with Alpha-Beta and without Alpha-beta.
>>>The scores and moves chosen were different.
>>>
>>>Is this normal for Alpha-Beta or is this an indication of an
>>>error in my implementation of Alpha-Beta pruning?
>>>
>>
>>It's a bug.  Alpha/beta _must_ produce the exact same result as minimax,
>>this was proven in "An analysis of Alpha/Beta Pruning" written by Knuth and
>>Moore, 1975....
>
>Actually, it is not necessarily true that there is a bug in the code. There is
>an assumption on that. Since the min max search should have been exhaustive to a
>certain depth, you cannot run the program to a deeper depth with the alpha beta
>or the scores could change which in turn could result in different moves as
>well.
>
>If the alpha beta was able to search deeper than the min max, then there is a
>bug in the testing as opposed to a bug in the code.

I think the assumption is that he's running to the same depth, otherwise of
course it won't return the same score and PV, otherwise we'd all search to depth
= 1 and quit.

bruce



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