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Subject: Re: Forced moves

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 05:56:56 07/30/99

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On July 30, 1999 at 05:09:08, Herman Hesse wrote:

>On July 30, 1999 at 02:36:56, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>
>>
>>On July 30, 1999 at 00:28:06, Ed Schröder wrote:
>>
>>>Search the first iteration without alpha/beta.
>>>
>>>Ed Schroder
>>
>>This would hurt your "game in one second" performance :-)
>>
>>bruce
>
>He told you all once. When Rebel was released able to give senseful 4-move lines
>for the first four moves. Four moves sorted into order. Only way was first
>iteration(s) without alpha-beta. No person ever commented.
>
>Now he told you twice. Only comment is a weak joke.
>
>Your forum stultifies when on-topic reigns. The off-topicals were the ones that
>saw and said so. Only dullness remains. Mr Schroder is sad about this. Possibly
>why he drops ideas in, hoping for souls to respond.
>
>Low iterations without alpha-beta lead to more senseful move ordering from hash
>when the PV is going to change in later iterations. This can save time. All
>spelt out so even the slow ones can see.
>
>Herman


Sorry, but this is _dead_ wrong.  Otherwise we would just do the 'low iterations
without alpha/beta' and then play the best move.  Check out Rebel on any test
suite.  I'll bet you find it changing to the _right_ move at extreme depths and
not at depth 1 or 2 or 3.

Doing a 1/2 ply search without alpha/beta can help a bit with ordering the root
moves, but _only_ a bit.  Because all you learn is which moves seem to be best
for 1-2 ply searches. (no, you won't do 3-4-5 ply searches at the root without
alpha/beta and finish them in reasonable time).  However, what is best at 2
plies has _nothing_ to do with what is best at 10, 11 or 12 plies...

This is an _old_ idea.  Ken Thompson did a 2 ply search without alpha/beta in
Belle to order the ply-1 move list.  I used his idea in Cray Blitz (I had the
ability to use a 'true-value' search at the root by resetting alpha/beta to
+/- infinity for each root move to get a score for each, useful for debugging
and other things).  It isn't 'new'.  It isn't particularly 'great'.  And it
absolutely does _not_ let you see that all moves but one lead to mate.  Because
they all (but one) might lead to a mate in 10, and you won't see that with a
1-2-3 ply search, generally.



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