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Subject: Re: What is the History table?

Author: Bas Hamstra

Date: 05:57:41 09/17/99

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On September 16, 1999 at 13:50:18, Alessandro Damiani wrote:

>On September 16, 1999 at 12:46:20, Peter Fendrich wrote:
>
>>On September 16, 1999 at 05:18:42, Bas Hamstra wrote:
>>
>>- snip -
>>
>>>History:
>>>
>>>(I never used it)
>>>
>>>A table of counters, used for movesorting. You use a table History[From][To] to
>>>keep track of the number of beta cutoffs for each move [From][To]. And use that
>>>to improve the probability of a cutoff (as you do with killers). If you already
>>>use more than 1 killer I have the impression History doesn't give much extra.
>>>
>>I don't agree with you here. My implementation of killer table only has effect
>>on local parts of the tree. For each new path the killer moves are cleared. The
>>history table is covering all of the tree and really improves move ordering in
>>some nodes. Normally there is no big overlap betwee the two.
>>//Peter
>
>I agree with you, Peter. That is the idea of history heuristic. It should not
>only be used when a cut-off occurs, but always when there is a best move.
>
>And since everybody knows that there is no best move at a fail-low, the history
>table should only be updated if
>
>            best>alpha
>
>where best is the score of the best move.
>
>Alessandro

How do you update killers? I store a killer when anything but the first move
(not being a capture) is > Alpha. That seems to work better than storing only
when >= Beta.

It works less well when:

a: I also include first moves
b: I update killers only when move >= beta in stead of > Alpha.


Regards,
Bas Hamstra.







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