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Subject: Clueless in Extension-land

Author: Stuart Cracraft

Date: 13:15:53 01/10/06


Hi - my extension credit is calculated for each ply in the search
and stored in several arrays, one for each type of extension.

The arrays for the given current ply are summed together

  extension=0; // Prove that we must extend. We assume we don't at first.
  :
  :
  AllExt[ply]=ChkExt[ply]+RecapExt[ply]+PawnExt[ply]+OneExt[ply]+ThreatExt[ply];
  if (AllExt[ply]>=1.00) extension=1;
  else if (ply>0 && AllExt[ply-1]<1.00 && AllExt[ply-1]+AllExt[ply]>=1.00) {
    extension=1;
  }
  else if (ply>1 && AllExt[ply-1]<1.00 && AllExt[ply-2]<1.00
    && AllExt[ply-2]+AllExt[ply-1]+AllExt[ply]>=1.00) {
    extension=1;
  }
  if (BM_X != 0.0)
    if (bmx) {
      AllExt[ply]+=BM_X; extension++; bmext++;
    }

And if extension is "1" after all of this, then we extend by 1 the
current move at the current ply known as 'ply'.

My questions are:

  I know that Bob Hyatt has used 0.75 as his check extension for many years
  and indicates it is a critical factor in throttling runaway check extensions.
  My problem is that since I sum as above, setting the credit for CheckExt[ply]
  (before the above code) to 0.75 would really be too little of a good thing,
  nothing in fact, since I would only extend a check if there is an additional
  consideration forcing a full extension and that is not what Bob meant.

  Beyond the above extensions,

     Check
     Recapture
     Pawn on 7th rank
     One move only in position
     Mate Threat (e.g. value of null move is showing mate in a couple ply)
     Botvinnik-Markoff
     Carry-Over Extension (e.g. neither of the last two ply generated an
      extension but their sum does, then extend)
      -- also same for last 3 ply.

  is there an important extension or method that is necessary and beneficial?

I currently have all of the above extensions being 1 full ply, except mate
threat and pawn on 7th are 0.5 (half a ply).

I know there are many bugs in this such as why am I doing [ply] and [ply-1]
and [ply-2] when the program's moves are [ply] [ply-2] and [ply-4] which
I just saw while writing this message.

I believe my extensions, being what they are, is why I can get only a
half-decent result on my tests, and that a better-debugged extension
implementation will reap fruit (no - not THAT kind of fruit!)

Stuart



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