Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 10:57:54 01/18/00
Go up one level in this thread
On January 18, 2000 at 12:49:38, Bruce Moreland wrote: [snip] >>Opinions? Am I all wet? > >Yes, you are all wet. I will resist the temptation to use a drug metaphor since >people seem to be a little cranky about that today. > >I don't see any reason to suppose that you can't use induction to predict the >characteristics of a 25-ply search by examining the characteristics of a 15-ply >search. I know you know a lot more about it than I do, and everyone is in agreement that I am wrong. But I still don't understand why. From the plethora of posts I have seen here where a program fails to find a move in a test position and it is found that it is zugzwang, I presume that it is not terribly rare. Now, ignoring NULL moves makes you run so much faster that it almost always a good idea. You get a full ply more -- sometimes two (if I understand correctly). But it seems to me that NULL move is dodging bullets in the sense that you almost never get bitten. But if you ignore thousands of them, maybe one of them was dangerous. And if you ignore one million of them, it could be even worse. On the other hand, I also recognize that there are more than one good pathway from most board positions. So perhaps even when it does go wrong, NULL move pruning may still pick out a good path most of the time. I am sure that my supposition is wrong, since so many others think that it is. But I still don't understand why.
This page took 0.02 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.