Added the UCI_LimitStrength and the UCI_Elo options, with an Elo
range of 2100-2900. When UCI_LimitStrength is enabled, the number
of threads is set to 1, and the search speed is slowed down according
to the chosen Elo level.
Todo:
1. Implement Elo levels below 2100 by blundering on purpose and/or
crippling the evaluation.
2. Automatically calibrate the maximum Elo by measuring the CPU speed
during program initialization, perhaps by doing some bitboard
computations and measuring the time taken.
No functional change when UCI_LimitStrength is false (the default).
Small micro-optimization in this very
time critical function.
Use bitwise 'or' instead of logic 'or' to avoid branches
in the assembly and use the result to skip an handful of checks.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
We do not accept null search returned mate values,
but we always do a full search in those cases.
So the variable mateThreat that is set only if null move
search returns a mate value is always false.
Restore the functionality of mateThreat moving the
assignement where it can be triggered.
After 999 games at 1+0
Mod vs Orig +253 =517 -229 51.20% +8 ELO
Bug reported by xiaozhi
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Tord says that using a lower horizon at PV nodes
looks strange and inconsistent with the general
philosophy of our search (i.e. always being more
conservative at PV nodes). So set LMR at 3 also
on search_pv().
Test result after 601 games seems to confirm this.
Mod vs Orig +156 =318 -127 52.41% 315.0/601 +17 ELO
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Test extension of LMR horizon to 3 plies alone, without
touching null move search. To keep the patch minimal we still
don't change LMR horizon in PV search. This will be the object
of the next patch.
Result seems good after 998 games:
Mod vs Orig +252/=518/-228 51.20% 511.0/998 +8 ELO
So dynamic null move reduction seems a bit stronger then
fixed reduction even with LMR horizon set to 3.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Revert to LMR horizont of 2 plies. Only if parent move
is a null move increase to 3 so to avoid the bad combination
of null move reduction + LMR reduction. This is a more
aggressive patch then previous one, but it seems we are
going in the wromg direction.
After 531 games result is not good:
Mod vs Orig +123/=265/-143 48.12% 255.5/531 -13 ELO
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Set null move reduction to R=4, but increase the LMR horizon
to 3 plies. The two tweaks are related and should compensate
the combined effect of null move + LMR reduction at shallow
depths.
Idea from Tord.
After 999 games at 1+0
Mod vs Orig +251 =522 -225 51.30% + 9 ELO
On Tord iMac Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz, one thread,
Mac OS X 10.6, at 1+0 time control we have:
Mod vs Orig 994-1006 -1.4 ELO
But Orig version is pgo compiled and Mod is not.
The PGO compiled version is about 8% faster, which
corresponds to about 7 Elo points. This means that
results are reasonably consistent.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
a static eval cached in the transposition table would always equal the static
eval of the current position. This is in general not true, because the cached
value could be from a previous search with different evaluation parameter
settings, or from a search from the opposite side (Stockfish's evaluation
function is assymmetric by default).
This feature makes sense during development, but
It doesn't seem to make sense for normal users.
Also fix a possible race where the GUI adjudicates
the game a fraction of second before the engine sets
looseOnTime flag so that it will bogusly waits until
it ran out of time at the beginning of the next new game.
The fix is to always reset looseOnTime at the beginning
of a new game.
Race condition spotted by Tord.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Mostly of times we are interested only in the sign of SEE,
namely if a capture is negative or not.
If the capturing piece is smaller then the captured one we
already know SEE cannot be negative and this information
is enough most of the times. And of course it is much
faster to detect then a full SEE.
Note that in case see_sign() is negative then the returned
value is exactly the see() value, this is very important,
especially for ordering capturing moves.
With this patch the calls to the costly see() are reduced
of almost 30%.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Some variables were global due to some old and now removed code,
but now can be moved in local scope.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Testing on Joona QUAD failed to give any
advantage. Actually we had a little loss:
Mod - Orig: 342.0 - 374.0
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Rename to move_is_promotion() to be more clear, also add
a new function move_promotion_piece() to get the
promotion piece type in the few places where is needed.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
When we are hunting for mate, transposition table is filled in
with mate scores. Current implemenatation of aspiration search
can't cope with this very well.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Move TT object away from heavy write accessed NodesSincePoll
and also, inside TT isolate the heavy accessed writes variable.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This was needed by an old optimization in sorting of
non-captures that is now obsoleted by new std::sort()
approach.
Remove also the unused depth member data. Interestingly
this has always been unused since the Glaurung days.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Also move NodesSincePoll away from the same cache line
of other heavy read accessed only variables.
Fortunatly we don't have anymore write access contention,
but still read access contention in some cases.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
They are always true anyway and are heavy used file scope
variables where there could be SMP contention. Although read only.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This reduces contention and reduce history trashing
effect especially at high search depths.
No functional change for single CPU case.
After 999 games at 1+0 on Dual Core Intel we have
Mod vs Orig +233 =526 -240 -2 ELO
We need to test at longer time controls and possibly with
a QUAD where we could foreseen an improvment.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This is a first step for future patches and in
any case seems a nice thing to do.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This should reduce concurrent accessing in SMP case.
Suggestion by Tord Romstad.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Both with added comment and changing the API to
reflect that only destination square and moved piece
is important for history.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Aspiration window search must be disabled for
multi-pv case.
We missed one point where aspiration window should
be disabled in this case.
Patch from Joona, with a little added edit by me.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Centralize in a single object all the global resources
management and avoid a bunch of sparse exit() calls.
This is more reliable and clean and more stick to C++ coding
practices.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Move closing of file in Book destructor. This
guarantees us against leaving the file open under
any case and simplifies also Book use.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Instead of a position because the key is all that we
need.
Interface is more clear and also very very little bit faster.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
We don't want to return unproven null move fails high, so
that if a position is so good that null move fails high we
want to check this with real do_move() / undo_move() test,
not just razoring the position because, from the opponent
point of view, is very bad.
These are tests results at 1+0
Mod vs Orig +252 -264 =483 49.40%
Mod vs Toga II 1.4.1SE +365 -325 =309 52.00%
So it seems a very slightly regression regarding orig version (but
withing error bar) and a nice increase against Toga that is what we
are interested most. Orig version scores 49.75% against Toga, so
we welcome this change ;-)
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
It is bogusly assigned from moves[i].move instead of mlist[i].move
or equivalently to moves[count].move that it seem more clear to me.
Bug is hidden while all the moves are included, in this default case
moves[i].move and mlist[i].move are the same variable.
Also a bit of cleanup while there.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
After proof testing on 3 different engines these
are the results:
Stockfish - Toga II 1.4.1SE +130 -132 =132 49.75%
Stockfish - Deep Sieng 3.0 +145 -110 =150 54.45%
Stockfish - HIARCS 12 MP +94 -149 =150 43.00%
So it seems no regressions occurs, although also no
improvment. But anyhow this patch increases Stockfish
strenght against itself, so merge it.
Note that this patch not only adds back razoring at depth
one, but also increases razor depth limit from 3 to 4
because hard coded depth 4 limit is no more overwritten
by UCI parameter that otherwise defaults to 3.
Because futility margins array has a fixed size we cannot
arbitrarly choose or change the SelectiveDepth parameter,
otherwise we have a crash for values bigger then array size.
On the other hand tweaking of this parameter requires some
modification to the hardcoded margins, so makes sense to hard
code also this very bounded one.
Who wants to experiment is of course free to change the sources.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Currently futility is allowed when depth < SelectiveDepth
and SelectiveDepth is 7*OnePly, so the comprison is
always true.
Patch could introduce a functional change only if
we choose to increase SelectiveDepth.
Currently no functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
When testing at 1'+0" time control results are still
reasonably good. We have made two sessions on two
different PC.
After 840 games Mod - Orig: +221 -194 =425 +10 ELO (two CPU)
After 935 games Mod - Orig: +246 -222 =467 +9 ELO (single CPU)
So it seems that with fast CPU and/or longer time controls
benefits of the patch are a bit reduced. This could be due
to the fact that only 3% of nodes are pruned by razoring at
depth one and these nodes are very swallow ones, mostly get
pruned anyway with only a slightly additional cost, even
without performing any do_move() call.
Another reason is that sometime (0,3%% of cases) a possible
good move is missed typically in positions when moving side
gives check, as example in the following one
3r2k1/pbpp1nbp/1p6/3P3q/6RP/1P4P1/P4Pb1/3Q2K1 w - -
The winning move Rxg7+ is missed.
Bottom line is that patch seems good for blitz times, perhaps
also for longer times. We should test against a third engine
(Toga ?) to have a final answer regarding this new setup.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Some time ago it was found by Marco Costalba that it's better
to disable razoring at depth one, because given the very low
evaluation of the node, futility pruning would already do
the job at very low cost and avoiding missing important moves.
Now enable razoring there again, but only when our quickly evaluated
material advantage is more than a rook. The idea is to try razoring
only when it's extremely likely that it will succeed.
Extreme lightning speed test show promising result:
Orig - Mod: +1285 =1495 -1348
This needs to be tested with longer time controls though.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Restructure RazorMargins and FutilityMargins arrays so that their
values can be more easily tuned.
Add RazorApprMargins array which replaces razorAtDepthOne concept,
because setting RazorApprMargin very high value at ply one is
same as not razoring there at all.
Comment out setting razoring and futility margins through uci to
avoid errors while tuning.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
If a variable will be populated reading an UCI option
then do not hard code its default values.
This avoids misleadings when reading the sources.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
And upon reentering the same position try it as first.
Normally qsearch moves order is already very good, first move
is the cut off in almost 90% of cases. With this patch, we get
a cut off on TT move of 98%.
Another good side effect is that we don't generate captures
and/or checks when we already have a TT move.
Unfortunatly we found a TT move only in 1% of cases. So real
impact of this patch is relatively low.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Restore old behaviour that after search is aborted we call insert_pv,
before breaking out from the iterative deepening loop.
Remove one useless FIXME and document other better.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
