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Subject: Re: Hash tables vs alpha/beta

Author: Peter Fendrich

Date: 08:46:29 01/18/00

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On January 17, 2000 at 10:54:53, Bas Hamstra wrote:

>It should work. I used this a while ago with ab (in stead of PVS) and it didn't
>give any problems. I don't see why it wouldn't work with PVS. 3L raises Alpha
>and 3U decreases Beta. If you get a fail high on that window there is a search
>inconsistency. An earlier search said "v can't be higher than X" and then
>research returns v > X. Does it still occur with nullmove turned off? Nullmove
>causes  search inconsistencies, which is normal. A different ab window lets
>nullmove prune different branches.
>
>
>Regards,
>Bas Hamstra.
It should work, but it doesn't! I'm trying to find out what the problem is,
still without any success. I have a big log-file to wade through.
Nullmove is not the problem but I have changed a lot of code lately so...

Vincent and Ernst had some ideas that I haven't tried yet.
//Peter


>On January 17, 2000 at 10:23:13, Peter Fendrich wrote:
>
>>When searching the hash table, I've detected basicly 9 different states.
>>The value from the table is a Lower (L) or Upper (U) bound or Inside (I) it's
>>A/B-window.
>>For each of these we have 3 cases:
>>1. value <= current Alpha
>>2. value >= current Beta
>>3. current Alpha < value < current Beta
>>
>>Combining it all we have: 1L, 1U, 1I, 2L, 2U, 2I, 3L, 3U and 3I
>>
>>For now I'm interested in case  and 3U.
>>When we have 3L, we know that the table entry is the lowest
>>possible value and that the current Alpha is lower. To me it seems
>>reasonable to set current Alpha = table value.
>>For 3L this will be: current Beta = table value.
>>
>>That doesn't work well with my program which has a PVS-based alg.
>>When re-searching a move, the A/B-window will be narrowed down in
>>the tree based on the 3L and 3U cases above and a FailHigh together with
>>a cut PV-line will be the result.
>>I have tried to set current Alpha = value-1 and current Beta = value+1
>>with a somewhat better result but this doesn't "feel" right!
>>
>>Now I've turned the thing off completely and can sleep at night again...
>>
>>Something is wrong here.
>>Comments please!
>>
>>//Peter



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