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Subject: Re: simple question about null-move

Author: Antonio Dieguez

Date: 17:14:49 11/05/99

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On November 05, 1999 at 12:03:36, William Bryant wrote:

>I would suspect that there may be errors in you implementation.  It took several
>weeks to debug my null move code.
>
>You may be doing all of these things, but issue to consider include:
>
>Make sure you make and unmake null move to set the hashtable signature for
>the new side to move, update ep square, etc.
>
>You must avoid making null moves where not making a move improves you position
>or the other side is in check, and if you just made a null move.
>
>There are a series of test my program does before making a null move.
>If I just made a null move -- don't do it again immediately.
>If in check, null is out.
>If material is low, this sets up for a zugswang(SP-- no dictionary right here
>right now)and null should be avoided.
>
>Also, since the goal of null move is to fail high, avoid doing a null if
>there is not chance it will fail high. When you probe the hash table, if the
>value is exact, or a upper bound (fail low) score, check the score to see if
>there is any point in doing the null move at all.  Bob calls this the null move
>'trick', which is well documented in the Crafty source code.  Look in the file
>hash.c which will return a don't do a null move flag.
>
>William
>wbryant@ix.netcom.com

Thanks William!

Anyway I dont have bugs (ok I think only) in my nullmove implementations, and
may be because my depth is from 0 to finaldepth in the search(not from x to 0),
and the finaldepth is passed too in the search function, and I dont know, may be
that makes more easy the thing who knows.

I still dont use hash tables but thanks for the voices(is it well spelled?)

Yes, zugzwang is a problem that many pograms have and I have to consider that,
there are a lot of things to do.

Thanks again, bye.



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