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Subject: Re: MINMAX verses ALPHA-BETA

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 13:41:00 01/20/99

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On January 20, 1999 at 16:35:31, Bruce Moreland 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?
>>
>>
>>
>>Also, The time is 1052.58 seconds without Alpha-Beta
>>and 3.3 seconds with Alpha-Beta.
>>
>>What ratio of elapsed time would indicate that I have achieved
>>good move ordering etc. with the Alpha-Beta pruning?
>
>You should get the same score unless:
>
>1) You have a hash table that you use to prune, and do any path-dependent
>scoring such as 50-move rule, or repetition detection.
>
>2) You do forward pruning based upon alpha or beta.  This includes null move
>forward pruning.
>
>3) You do any sort of imperfect hashing such as pawn structure hashing, where it
>might be possible that two pawn structures could have the same hash key, and
>this might go undetected.
>
>You should get the same variation (and same score) returned unless:
>
>1) You do any of the above.
>
>2) Your move ordering system has anything to do with positions seen previously,
>for example history heuristic and possibly killer move heuristic.
>
>You should be able to take the "if (score >= beta) return score;" line out of
>your program and have it return the same scores and same PV's, in signficantly
>longer time, unless you do any of the above, or you have a bug.
>
>bruce

I made this list seem exhaustive but it isn't.  There are lots of ways you can
introduce inconsistencies (which you may wish to leave in), but in a pure
algorithmic sense alpha beta must return the same result as min-max.

bruce



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