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Subject: Re: programmers: pawn hash tables

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:41:18 03/08/03

Go up one level in this thread


On March 08, 2003 at 03:43:20, Ed Schröder wrote:

>On March 08, 2003 at 01:42:15, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On March 08, 2003 at 01:29:46, Joel wrote:
>>
>>>Hey All,
>>>
>>>Just wondering what everyone thinks is the best way to implement a pawn hash
>>>table?
>>>
>>>At the moment I am incrementally generating a seperate pair of pawn hash keys,
>>>and using them to index a table - very similar to how my transposition table
>>>works.
>>>
>>>Is it possible to do _significantly_ better than this? It seems to be somewhat
>>>expensive to do, although having said that my NPS still went up at least 20% in
>>>most situations.
>
>>That is what everyone since chess 4.x has done.  Two signatures, one for
>>all pieces and pawns, one just for pawns.
>
>I don't use it, the problem is that you can not evaluate the coherence between
>pawns and the other pieces. If you have stuff like that in your eval pawn
>hashing is unusable and IMO that evaluation (coherence) is a must in a chess
>program.

Sure you can.  You can evaluate all the pawn-only stuff, and then you can
pre-cmpute whatever you need such as passed pawn locations, weak pawn locations,
weak square locations, open file locations, half-open-file locations, and so
forth.  You stuff that in the pawn hash table, and then use it when you evaluate
pieces to get the "coordination".

I do the same thing for king safety which uses pawn structure as a major factor.
But then piece locations, number of pieces, etc are folded in to the score
using the pre-computed pawn structure values.

I don't think _anybody_ evaluates pawns by themselves, except to recognize the
classic weak pawns, but doing that saves time and pre-computing everything else
saves more time.  IE open files and weak squares for use in king safety.  Open
files for use in rook scoring. (weak pawns also).  And so forth.

I perhaps should have said "that is what everybody that does pawn hashing
has done...."  :)


>
>My best,
>
>Ed
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>I am not really worried about effeciency as much as some other people here, so I
>>>guess I am really asking whether I am missing something major.
>>
>>Doesn't sound like it.  But you will end up storing more than just a score for
>>the position.  IE passed pawn locations, weak pawn locations (or bitmaps that
>>feature them).  Etc...
>>
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>Joel



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