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Subject: Re: Sacrifice Search

Author: James Robertson

Date: 21:56:25 10/23/99

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On October 22, 1999 at 17:57:47, KarinsDad wrote:

>On October 22, 1999 at 16:42:13, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On October 22, 1999 at 11:43:37, KarinsDad wrote:
>>
>>>Does any program currently do a sacrifice search?
>>>
>>>By this, I mean the program intuits that a sacrifice may be in order (within the
>>>first 3 ply maybe), and then pretends that the sacrifice move is the PV and
>>>searches down it's ply to a deeper depth or somesuch in order to find out it's
>>>validity.
>>>
>>>Or, do all current programs only make a sacrifice if they perceive a definitive
>>>gain within the same ply depth as most other moves?
>>>
>>>KarinsDad :)
>>
>>
>>I find them via a normal search.  The point being that you should see how
>>many times a sacrifice works, how many times you 'think' it works, and then
>>figure out how much effort you spend proving that most don't work.  As
>>opposed to spending that effort on a normal tree search...
>
>Hence the word "intuits" in my previous post. To make it worthwhile, you would
>only want to do it when some set of rare conditions are detected (1 root
>position out of thousands perhaps) which could indicate that a sacrifice might
>be favorable. What those conditions might be is unknown to me and part of the
>reason I posted the question. I had the feeling that most programs would only
>find them via the normal search.
>
>KarinsDad :)

It seems like a heck of a lot of work to decide what conditions are good for
sacrifices.... Even seemingly obvious situations (e.g. three bishops, two
knights, a rook and a queen all bearing down on the enemy castle) would be
difficult....

James



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