Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Null-move R=? question

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 16:51:32 09/29/99

Go up one level in this thread


On September 29, 1999 at 13:02:17, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:

>On September 29, 1999 at 09:34:45, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>1.  I tried the R=2/R=1 trick...  ie if depth > 2 use R=2, else use R=1, so
>>that you always have a non-null on the end.  That hurts performance badly.
>
>In what way ? Is it worse than using R=1 for everything ? It got the
>impression it was ok, but maybe I didn't do enough testing.

think about the shape of the tree.  there are _many_ positions out at the
depth=3, 2, 1 (remaining) plies.  If you require a non-quiescence follow-up
to a null move, at depth=3 (remaining) you won't use R=2, because that will
drop you right into the q-search.  At depth=2, you can't do a null-move at
all as even with R=1 you end up in the capture search.  And at depth=1 you
go to the capture search anyway.  But when you test, you discover that doing
nulls at those positions is a big win, speed-wise...





>
>I'm unsure about R=2. It seems very risky when you get less than 5 ply
>searches.


it definitely is...




>
>>2.  R=1 is safer, but it turns a 5 ply search into 4 plies or less (if you
>>use recursive null-move).  But on any reasonable hardware you should _never_
>>see 5 ply searches.  IE on ICC in blitz games, I generally see at least 8 and
>>normally 9-10 or more...
>
>Maybe I should have mentioned this: my program plays bughouse/crazyhouse,
>mostly 3 0 timecontrols on a Cyrix150 machine. Most searches I see go to
>4 or 5 ply, even less if there are lots of checking lines, and sometimes
>more if there aren't much pieces in hand. I'm seeing a lot more moves per
>position than the 38 average you guys have to cope with :)
>
>--
>GCP

ugh... yes you are... :)

keep us posted on how it works... that is an interesting game...




This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.