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Subject: Re: Interesting mate test for hashing

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 13:36:44 09/10/99

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On September 10, 1999 at 15:58:45, Ed Schröder wrote:

>
>For one moment forget about alpha and beta, you are on the wrong track as
>alpha and beta are not a part at all of the code. You need an extra stack
>that is set to -INF at each ply. Then before you do A/B you do the bestmove
>calculation for that ply. Involved variables: SCORE and STACK, no alpha beta.
>
>Ed

I understood that...  but alpha and beta play a roll in this.. because each
time you call Search() and then do your test with "best" when the score comes
back, you get a bound... and nothing says that you get the _best_ bound on the
score for each move you search, you only get a bound that is <= alpha.  And they
aren't directly comparable with each other, because the search stops as soon as
any move at the next ply returns a score >= beta (which is <= alpha at the
current ply).  Even though there could be even _better_ moves were the search
at the next ply to be completed.  IE, we learn this:

value for move1 <= 200
value for move2 <= 150

no way to say that the first is better than the second.  We simply don't know
that.  It might be. Or it might not be, because the alpha/beta search done
below this node doesn't supply that information.

in any case, trying this was certainly slower for me, as the tree always got
bigger, because I try the hash table move before _all_ other moves.  And with
this approach, for me, it was wrong far more than it was right, and the tree
grew as a result.



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