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Subject: Re: Null move

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 14:19:52 02/04/99

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On February 04, 1999 at 14:45:54, James Robertson wrote:

>Actually, there was another bug as well. How much should the null move improve a
>program's performance? It seems to be searching .5 to 1 plies farther, and
>approx. 2/3 to 3/4 the number of nps. Is this normal? In matches against the
>non-null move version, it seems to be edging it out by with 6 wins, 4 losses. In
>a match against Cilian, the null moves actually seem to be doing worse.
>
>James

Here is some data.  The first section is LCTI running on a P6/200 for 210
seconds per position.  I'll tell you how to read the first line.  "12/9" means
that the version with null move completed 12 plies, the version without
completed 9 plies.  The "!" simply indicates that the depth is different, I put
this in so I could grep for it.  The first time is the time it took the
null-move version to complete the last ply that both finished, the second time
is the time it took the non-null move version to complete the same ply.  In the
first line, it took the null move version 3 seconds to complete ply 9, and the
non-null version 3 minutes.  The percentage at the end is the ratio of these
times.

If you were to take all of the times and add them together, then compute this
ratio, you'd get approximately 400%.  So in the case of my program, you get to
the same depth in 1/4 of the time, typically.

position 001                     12/ 9! 00:00:03.755  00:03:04.606  4916.27%
position 002                     11/ 8! 00:00:30.985  00:01:17.993  251.71%
position 003                     10/ 8! 00:00:11.797  00:01:09.400  588.29%
position 004                     11/ 9! 00:00:29.342  00:02:57.195  603.90%
position 005                     10/ 8! 00:00:14.221  00:01:30.951  639.55%
position 006                     13/ 9! 00:00:01.963  00:01:11.633  3649.16%
position 007                     10/ 8! 00:00:09.985  00:01:57.429  1176.05%
position 008                     10/ 8! 00:00:07.521  00:00:48.259  641.66%
position 009                     10/ 8! 00:00:04.827  00:00:53.887  1116.37%
position 010                     10/ 8! 00:00:11.046  00:01:43.399  936.08%
position 011                     13/ 9! 00:00:05.478  00:01:50.379  2014.95%
position 012                     11/ 8! 00:00:10.365  00:01:46.423  1026.75%
position 013                     10/ 8! 00:00:12.287  00:03:27.318  1687.30%
position 014                     10/ 8! 00:00:11.968  00:03:02.042  1521.07%
position 015                     12/ 9! 00:00:07.802  00:03:11.165  2450.21%
position 016                     10/ 8! 00:00:18.647  00:02:39.299  854.29%
position 017                     10/ 8! 00:00:17.816  00:02:49.254  950.01%
position 018                      9/ 7! 00:00:09.824  00:02:19.861  1423.67%
position 019                     11/ 8! 00:00:20.931  00:01:01.128  292.05%
position 020                     19/18! 00:00:57.643  00:02:21.143  244.86%
position 021                     17/15! 00:00:28.071  00:01:57.419  418.29%
position 022                     17/10! 00:00:28.030  00:01:28.037  314.08%
position 023                     14/13! 00:01:11.833  00:01:13.827  102.78%
position 024                     15/15  00:02:32.489  00:02:11.869  86.48%
position 025                     15/15  00:02:24.288  00:02:28.394  102.85%
position 026                     14/10! 00:00:06.139  00:01:07.227  1095.08%
position 027                     15/14! 00:01:19.274  00:02:15.115  170.44%
position 028                     15/11! 00:00:03.275  00:00:58.104  1774.17%

I can produce a chart for ECM, but it'd be bigger.  It looks the same.

The next section is a comparison of solutions for the ECM suite.  The null-move
version solved 619 in 20 seconds, the non null-move version solved 565 in the
same time.  It's worth noting that the null move version solved in excess of 565
(meaning 569 in this case) in 9 seconds.

I conclude from this that the null-move version is approximately twice as fast
tactically, and this is approximately true if you look at other times, though
not always strictly true.

If you combine these results with the LCTI results I believe the data indicates
that null-move search gets tactical problems more quickly, but it takes a little
more depth to get them.  It takes me 1/4 the nodes to get through depth D, but I
only get the answer in 1/2 the time.

I'll take it though.

####  444  447
---- ---- ----
0001  398  351
0002  461  410
0003  497  438
0004  525  459
0005  537  472
0006  545  487
0007  552  502
0008  562  511
0009  569  521
0010  575  525
0011  581  530
0012  585  534
0013  592  536
0014  594  540
0015  595  544
0016  599  549
0017  606  554
0018  609  556
0019  615  562
0020  619  565



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