Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 07:34:23 10/23/99
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On October 23, 1999 at 09:57:41, KarinsDad wrote: >On October 23, 1999 at 05:30:05, Alessandro Damiani wrote: > >[snip] >> >>Forward pruning is the opposite of backward pruning. With this in mind I would >>say null-move is forward pruning: it prunes before the subtree is searched. >> >>Forward pruning should be the name of a general technique and not only for >>excluding moves from search (like Qsearch). >> >>I would make two classes: forward pruning, backward pruning. >> >>Alessandro > >In the tens of thousands of posts I have read here, I do not think I have ever >read the term backward pruning (yet another reason to have a separate technical >section). > >Could you please explain what backward pruning is? > >Thanks, > >KarinsDad :) Backward pruning is what alpha/beta does to minimax trees. As you 'back up scores', you can make decisions about which moves absolutely don't need to be searched, because of alpha/beta bounds and the score just backed up for a move. This was the term originally used in the first paper on alpha/beta and it has been used ever since to apply to programs that do searches and then use the results of those searches to eliminate other branches without searching them.
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