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Subject: Re: MTD(f)

Author: Vasik Rajlich

Date: 10:42:56 06/20/05

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On June 20, 2005 at 08:22:17, Ricardo Gibert wrote:

>On June 20, 2005 at 05:31:17, Vasik Rajlich wrote:
>
>...
>>
>>I don't understand why that would be the case. Can you explain?
>
>To understand the reason, it is necessary to explain no progress pruning. Here
>is an illustration of no progress pruning:
>
>a - b - c - d - ... - e - f - g
>          \             \
>            h             i
>
>Let the letters a thru g represent successive moves in a line being analyzed. No
>progress pruning says that if the position after move i instead of move f leads
>to the same position as move instead d, then move i can be pruned from
>consideration, because it could have been reached earlier.
>
>Where this gets you in trouble is if move h turns out to be quite a good move.
>The positions after moves from d to e will not reflect this fact, since move i
>was pruned. The positions after moves from d to e will get stored in the HT with
>the wrong score and if a subsequent line should get a HT hit that uses these
>scores, the search will get fooled as to the true value of the positions after
>the moves from d to e. This is not good.
>
>One solution to this is to store the hash moves but not the hash scores for
>positions dependent (d thru e) on a no progress prune. Another idea is to keep
>the hash scores, but associate a reduced draft for the scores. Yet another idea
>is to chuck no progress pruning as being more trouble than it is worth. The
>latter idea is attractive, since it is not a big win.
>

Aaaah. Yeah, never mind what I said before, I understand now - those HT scores
will be _really_ not correct.

Vas

>>
>>The interaction of no progress pruning with HT will cause you some problems
>>because the pruning is path-dependent, while the positions in the HT are not.
>>You'll store in the HT a position which was later pruned (actually reduced)
>>because of lack of progress, and then you'll come to that same position via a
>>different path where this pruning (actually reducing) shouldn't be done.
>>
>>The question not everybody agrees about is how of much of a problem this is.
>>
>>Vas
>>
>...





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