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Subject: Re: Killer moves , history heuristic , and attack table questions

Author: José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba

Date: 09:51:20 06/10/99

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On June 10, 1999 at 11:30:59, William Bryant wrote:

>Good luck to all moderator candidates.  And now for something completely
>different ...     :)
>
>A couple of questions.
>
>I re - de -bugged my search after adding the killer heuristic and noted
>that it does better in most positions - _but_ - some positions seem to do much
>worse.  I suspect this continues to be a move ordering issue.
>
>For example,
>on the endgame position FINE 70,
>without the killer heuristic it fails high on ply 26 finding Kb1 in about 3 1/2
>minutes, but with the killer heuristic, at about ply 20 or 21 there is a
>noticable slow down in time to achieve the next ply.
>
>Are there some positions or phases in the game where the killer moves are not
>needed and should be avoided?
>

	Most likely yes. One of the difficult tasks is to clearly identify those
positions with some kind of cheap test.
José.

>Is this a bug ( or feature ), and most likely due to move ordering?
>If so, why apparent only after ply 20.
>
>I noted that on this position the history heuristic begins to add up to some
>larger numbers.  Is there a point where the history table should be reset or
>reduced within a search rather than only at the start of each search?
>
>Lastly, I'm thinking of adding attack tables to speed up the search.  At
>present, I think they would be helpful in identifying all the squares that a
>pawn or piece can attack when placed at a particular location which would speed
>up the InCheck() function.  Where else would these tables be helpful?  Since I
>plan to use 64 bit long long values and logical 'and' those with a square mask,
>this will return a boolean value about whether the piece attacks. Can they be
>used in move generation?  Other locations? Any comments, pointers, or referances
>to articles or source code would be appreciated.
>
>William
>wbryant@ix.netcom.com



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