Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: zobrist hashing

Author: vitor

Date: 02:01:02 05/29/99

Go up one level in this thread


On May 29, 1999 at 00:03:09, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On May 28, 1999 at 18:07:17, vitor wrote:
>
>>as far as i can tell, zobrist hashing seems to be an imperfect(but fast) hashing
>>scheme, meaning it is possible that your program will mistake position X as
>>position Y.
>>
>>so my question is:
>>is zobrist hashing the current standard in computer chess? is it just an
>>accepted risk or are there any perfect hashing schemes that are used?
>
>
>The term "perfect hashing scheme" is an oxymoron.  There is no such animal,
>_by definition_.  Because you are reducing an N-bit quantity (if I recall,
>from a mathematical discussion a few years ago, a chess board can be
>represented in something just over 160 bits [I have not followed the discussion
>here as this isn't a burning issue with me]) to an M-bit quantity, where
>N >> M.  IE I hash using 64 bits everywhere...  which means there is _no_ way
>to represent a chess board accurately in only 64 bits...  since the original is
>> 64 bits...

im probably using the wrong terminology. what i meant by perfect hashing is that
every position gets a unique id key. without a unique key as in zobrist, a
program might mistake a collision for a match.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.