Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 02:08:06 08/20/99
Go up one level in this thread
On August 20, 1999 at 04:59:26, James Robertson wrote: >When my program spots a mate, if the position is, say, mate in 5, it may give a >score "mate in 10", and then the next move "mate in 6", and then "mate in 3", >and so on. Sometimes the "mate in x" will increase to "mate in x+y". > >When a mate is spotted, my program never fails to mate, and it seems to do it in >the minimum moves possible. I am still worried; I don't think I have noticed any >other programs doing this. > >I adjust my mate scores to reflect the node (if (score > MATE/2) score -= ply), >but I may be goofing this up. Is this tied in with my problem in the post below >this one? If anyone can help, I would really appreciate it. > >James When you want to store a mate score or bound in the hash table, adjust the score so that it is a bound, if you can. For instance, if the score is mate in 6, store it as >= mate in 300 or whatever. There are some dumb cases like if you are failing high or failing low, where you may have to just laugh and not store anything. This won't hurt performance, I think, and will guarantee that you can never get a bogus mate score bug ever. If the bound is not enough to cause a cutoff, chances are that you are either winning big or losing big, so who cares. Please resist the temptation to implement this and then assume/wish that you've fixed the problem you mention in the other thread. bruce
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