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Subject: Re: History based pruning question

Author: Volker Böhm

Date: 16:00:26 08/26/05

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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

Hi Alvaro,

the first time I tried history based pruning I was allmost sure that this
couldn´t work. But now it works fine for me. One point I have to add is that I
only count a fail low if there is some move sorted after it that failed high,
thus I do not count fails on alpha nodes.

I can´t really beleive that there are really many moves that are more often
failing high than failing low. But it is the case.

There are many parameters you can experiment with:

1. how many points you add to a history-pruning table for a move failing
high/low dependant on the current search depth. (example square of depth?)
2. Which moves are not reduced even if the fail high/fail low ratio is "bad"
(example: captures, check moves, promotions, ...)
3. At what ratio do you reduce and how many plies do you reduce depending on the
current search depth
4. What do you do if a reduced move fails high (search again without reduction?)
5. "Hysterese": Prevent a toggling of pruning/non pruning decisions by adding
some points if a move switches from pruning to non pruning.
6. Interaction between moves and pieces (example a rook move that leads to a
double rook on a column could be handled different as the same rook move without
doubling rooks).
I have tried at least 50 different combinations of those parameters. For me I
have found one combination that improved strength much. But the combination is
far away from the combination I had expected to be best.

The only advice I can give for this type of pruning: don´t think to much, just
try! And keep it simple!

Greetings Volker



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