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Subject: Re: Passed Pawns and Extensions?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:47:22 08/21/99

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On August 21, 1999 at 10:19:06, William Bryant wrote:

>How do programs evaluate passed pawns in the search to trigger a passed pawn
>push extenison.  I noted in Crafty's code that it check to see if a pawn push is
>a passed pawn, and the pawn won't be immediately captured, and then searches
>deeper.
>
>What stratigies do programs use to keep track of passed pawns?

In a bitmap program it is trivial and needs one AND operation to determine
that a pawn is passed.  In Cray Blitz, we incrementally updated a vector that
identified which pawns were passed, and did a similar inexpensive test there.

I'm not sure this is even a significant extension, to be honest.



>
>Are these updated in makemove and takeback functions or do you call an
>evaluate-for-passed-pawns function in the search to see if things have changed
>since the last pawn move?
>
>What gains in the search does a passed pawn push extension provide?

good question.  I did it in Cray Blitz, so I kept doing it in crafty.  I'm
not sure it is worth a thing.




>
>Thanks in a advance.
>
>William
>wbryant@ix.netcom.com



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