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Subject: Re: quiesce node explosion

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 07:00:26 01/25/04

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On January 24, 2004 at 18:35:22, Uri Blass wrote:

>On January 24, 2004 at 17:12:45, Tord Romstad wrote:
>
>>On January 24, 2004 at 15:57:50, Mike Siler wrote:
>>
>>>In an average middlegame position, around 80-85% of the nodes my program
>>>searches are quiesce nodes. I have a static exchange evaluator and I only search
>>>captures with SEE value > 0. It seems like other engines are always under 25%
>>>qnodes. What else should I be doing to reduce these numbers?
>>
>>Use the SEE more aggressively.  When the static eval is below beta, but
>>static_eval+(value of capturing biggest hanging enemy piece) > beta+margin,
>>return beta.  This is too risky unless your SEE is very sophisticated.  There
>>are
>>two ways to solve this problem:  You can improve the accuracy of your SEE, but
>>this tends to make it much slower (of course).  You can also use your static
>>evaluation function to estimate the tactical complexity of the position, and use
>>this estimate to decide whether it is safe to trust your SEE at this node.  If
>>there
>>are pinned, trapped or overloaded pieces or too many pieces are hanging, you
>>search the captures, if not you just return beta.
>>
>>I use the second approach.  My SEE is rather simple, and my qsearch uses
>>information
>>computed by the static eval to decide whether (and which) captures should be
>>searched.
>>
>>Tord
>
>This post seems to contradict another post of you
>http://www.talkchess.com/forums/1/message.html?343947
>
>You said there that the problem with futility pruning is making assumption about
>how much a move can change the evaluation and I read now that you do exactly
>that(make assumptions about how much a capture can change the score).

In that post, I was talking about futility pruning in the main search, which I
don't
do.  I use futility pruning in the qsearch, though.  Ideally I would prefer to
avoid them
there, too, but the cost is too big.

So in this particular case, there isn't really a contradiction.  However, I'm
sure you can
often find real contradictions between things I have posted at different times,
too.  What
I do and don't do changes very rapidly.

Tord



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