Author: David Blackman
Date: 22:22:53 01/31/00
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On January 31, 2000 at 01:16:06, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >TSCP has searched to a fixed number of ply through version 1.42. > >For the ICC tournament, I added code to allow it to search for a fixed amount of >time instead. (For obvious reasons.) > >This decision has come under fire from people who think it's not appropriate for >a "simple" program. > >I would like to hear some discussion about this before making the new version >public. > >-Tom I think fixed time searching is an important feature. If you do the obvious simple implementation it can't be more than about 20 lines of code probably split over two different places. And it's pretty easy to understand what it does. I'd say put this in for sure. Even for a deliberately simple program, i think the only debateable thing is if you want to make the timing code more sophisticated than the simplest model. For instance do you want to prevent it making a move immediately if the allocated time runs out when you are failing low? Handling that properly might add another 20 lines of code, and would be very confusing to someone who doesn't understand why it is a good idea. Put it in to educate them, or leave it out to keep the program simple? :-)
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