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Subject: Re: Forced moves

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 05:50:42 07/30/99

Go up one level in this thread


On July 30, 1999 at 06:16:34, blass uri wrote:

>
>On July 29, 1999 at 23:07:51, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On July 29, 1999 at 21:47:26, Peter McKenzie wrote:
>>
>>>On July 29, 1999 at 20:54:08, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>On July 29, 1999 at 18:58:12, Ian Osgood wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Do other program authors curtail the search when there is a forced move at the
>>>>>root?
>>>>>
>>>>>How do you detect that a root move may be forced?
>>>>>
>>>>>Could you compare the values of the best and second-best root moves after a
>>>>>search iteration to detect a forced root move?  (Granted, the second-best score
>>>>>won't be accurate due to alpha-beta, but I figure that if the difference was
>>>>>greater than a queen's value, you could still conclude that the best move was
>>>>>forced.)
>>>>
>>>>The only sure way to do this is if there is only one legal move.
>>>
>>>Another safe one is if you figure out that all other moves get mated instantly.
>>>I don't do that yet in LambChop, but it doesn't sound too hard.
>>
>>
>>How would you discover this?  You get a score for the first move (the one you
>>think is obvious) and all the rest fail low and return alpha.
>
>You can get a score for the 2 best moves and not only for the first move.
>If you use the 2 options usually only for 1/10000 of your time then in most of
>the cases you are 0.01% slower but when the evaluation of the second best move
>is mate against yourself you can be faster.
>
>Uri


No you can't.  Alpha / beta doesn't do this.  If you study programs, the first
move at the root takes well over 50% of the total search time.  To get the score
for the second-best move will take this much time _again_ above and beyond what
would normally be taken.

IE in a normal search, with 30 moves at the root, 3 minutes per move as the
target time,

move1:  90 seconds
move2-30: 90 seconds

to get the score for the second-best move:

move1:  90 seconds
move2:  90 seconds
move3-30 87 seconds

A _huge_ loss.



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