Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:45:40 10/29/99
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On October 29, 1999 at 12:54:51, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >Sorry... but not even close. I have used null move since 1989, when Don Beal >wrote the JICCA paper "Selective search without tears" which was a detailed >description of the null-move approach". A bit more than 5 years if my math is >right, and _not_ a commercial programmer. When we were getting ready (and I am >not sure about the exact time) for an ACM event, Burton Wendrof pointed out this >to me (I am not even sure it was in the JICCA now that I think about it) and >sent me a copy. I added the code with 10 minutes work (I used R=1 to start >with, Beal mentioned R=2, but it seemed unsafe to me at the time). > >Where does the 'commercial programmer' angle you mention come from? > > I thought about this some more. I now remember the name of Murray Campbell's paper which was "Some experiments with the null-move search". This was _the_ paper on the classic null-move search, and was written while Murray was at the University of Alberta, which means prior to chiptest/deep thought, which first played in 1986. So somewhere around 1985-1987 is the time when null-move search became generally known. Murray explained the algorithm, the overhead, and even discussed R=2 but mentioned that at 198x speeds (whatever that was) it was not certain that it was safe to use without having to accept severe tactical mistakes. I believe "Selective search without tears" came out before this (Don Beal author) as Murray attributed the original idea to Beal. I think the main new thing that came out in Chrilly's paper was the "null-move threat extension" defined in the section "the program that knew too much". But this was hardly the first publication about null-move. This came out after Crafty was already running IIRC. And Crafty had null-move in version 1.2, which was inside the first month of its development. Version 3.4 included the null-move threat extension mentioned by Chrilly. Which stayed in for several months before being discarded.
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