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Subject: Re: History based pruning question

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 14:21:57 08/26/05

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On August 26, 2005 at 17:08:52, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On August 26, 2005 at 16:58:21, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On August 26, 2005 at 14:54:32, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On August 26, 2005 at 14:21:34, Alvaro Jose Povoa Cardoso wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hi,
>>>>some of you compare the number of times a move failed high to the number o times
>>>>the same move failed low in order to decide if a move can be reduced one ply.
>>>>I've tested this and also tested using the actual values of the history table
>>>>(using of course another history table for fail lows).
>>>>I couldn't reach a conclusion though.
>>>>What is your experience on this?
>>>>
>>>>best regards,
>>>>Alvaro
>>>
>>>
>>>My first thought is that the number of "fail lows" is irrelevant.  What you
>>>really want to avoid is a reduction on a move that might fail high.  Any move
>>>will fail low in some situations, but you want to handle the "typical" case
>>>correctly and not reduce if there is a reasonable chance the reduction will hide
>>>something.
>>
>>I think that it is relevant.
>>
>>If a move was never tried and never had an option to fail low then you do not
>>want to reduce it.
>>
>
>Chances of that happening is about zero.  There are only a finite (and small)
>number of different possible moves in the game.  "All the right moves" (PhD
>thesis by Ebeling) illustrated this.

I agree that there is a finite number of moves but
I am sure that there are moves that are never tried during the first seconds of
a search simply because you need many moves to make them legal.

It does not mean that in the first time that they are legal they should be
pruned.

For example
[D]r1b3k1/1pp5/8/8/8/8/6PP/4KB1R w - - 0 1

I doubt if you will find a move like Kf6-g7 at small depths but it does not mean
that the move should be pruned and this move can be logical in supporting passed
pawns.

Uri



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