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Subject: Re: QSearch and SEE

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 10:06:59 08/08/99

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On August 08, 1999 at 12:41:07, Bas Hamstra wrote:

>Bob,
>
>I read that thread with interest. I am experimenting with the qsearch (and SEE)
>too. Currently I use only check evasions in the qsearch. I don't like it when
>the qsearch stumbles per accident on a mate and it doesn't see it's a mate. And
>it returning a bogus Eval because Eval was > Beta. With evasions only that won't
>happen. It doesn't cost an awful lot of nodes and it sees mates quicker.
>

I did this sort of stuff in Cray Blitz, but I controlled the 'check evasion'
stuff...  ie if the first q-search move was a check, then I would evade at
qsearch ply-2, and if the move at qsearch ply-3 was a check, I would evade at
ply-4, etc.  IE so long as _every_ qsearch ply for one side was a check
evasion, I evaded at N+2.  But the minute the side in question was not in
check, it could stand pat.  And I would do no more evasions for that side below
this node since they would not lead to a forced mate (the side on move can
always stand pat and not play a capture if all captures lead to mate...)




>And I can confirm that SEE ordering doesn't give a great reduction in treesize
>but throwing out losers is a win. However I did a MVV/LVA scheme while only
>throwing out "obvious" losers. That is, when A > D and after the capture A is
>hanging, throw it out. That's much faster than SEE. If I'm not mistaken it did
>not do much worse than SEE.


Note that I don't use SEE on _all_ q-search captures...  There are plenty that
can be weeded out without calling SEE at all...  IE I use a trick just like
yours to avoid calling Swap() in cases where the capture is obviously bad...




>
>(tried to reply to some posts yesterday, but couldn't post)
>
>Regards,
>Bas Hamstra.



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