There is an ambiguity between global and std clamp implementations when compiling in c++17,
and on certain toolchains that are not strictly conforming to c++11.
This is solved by putting our clamp implementation in a namespace.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2572
No functional change.
Current move histories are known to work well near the leaves, whilst at
higher depths they aren't very helpful. To address this problem this
patch introduces a table dedicated for what's happening at plies 0-3.
It's structured like mainHistory with ply index instead of color.
It get cleared with each new search and is filled during iterative
deepening at higher depths when recording successful quiet moves near
the root or traversing nodes which were in the principal variation
(ttPv).
Medium TC (20+0.2):
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e4d358790a0a02810d096dc
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {-0.50,1.50}
Total: 100910 W: 16682 L: 16376 D: 67852
Ptnml(0-2): 1177, 10983, 25883, 11181, 1231
LTC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e4e2cb790a0a02810d09714
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {0.25,1.75}
Total: 80444 W: 10495 L: 10095 D: 59854
Ptnml(0-2): 551, 7479, 23803, 7797, 592
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2557
Bench: 4705960
Fixes#2533, fixes#2543, fixes#2423.
the code that prevents false mate announcements depending on the TT
state (GHI), incorrectly used VALUE_MATE_IN_MAX_PLY. The latter
constant, however, also includes, counterintuitively, the TB win range.
This patch fixes that, by restoring the behavior for TB win scores,
while retaining the false mate correctness, and improving the mate
finding ability. In particular
no alse mates are announced with the poisened hash testcase
```
position fen 8/8/8/3k4/8/8/6K1/7R w - - 0 1
go depth 40
position fen 8/8/8/3k4/8/8/6K1/7R w - - 76 1
go depth 20
ucinewgame
```
mates are found with the testcases reported in #2543
```
position fen 4k3/3pp3/8/8/8/8/2PPP3/4K3 w - - 0 1
setoption name Hash value 1024
go depth 55
ucinewgame
```
and
```
position fen 4k3/4p3/8/8/8/8/3PP3/4K3 w - - 0 1
setoption name Hash value 1024
go depth 45
ucinewgame
```
furthermore, on the mate finding benchmark (ChestUCI_23102018.epd),
performance improves over master, roughly reaching performance with the
false mate protection reverted
```
Analyzing 6566 mate positions for best and found mates:
----------------best ---------------found
nodes master revert fixed master revert fixed
16000000 4233 4236 4235 5200 5201 5199
32000000 4583 4585 4585 5417 5424 5418
64000000 4852 4853 4855 5575 5584 5579
128000000 5071 5068 5066 5710 5720 5716
256000000 5280 5282 5279 5819 5827 5826
512000000 5471 5468 5468 5919 5935 5932
```
On a testcase with TB enabled, progress is made consistently, contrary
to master
```
setoption name SyzygyPath value ../../../syzygy/3-4-5/
setoption name Hash value 2048
position fen 1R6/3k4/8/K2p4/4n3/2P5/8/8 w - - 0 1
go depth 58
ucinewgame
```
The PR (prior to a rewrite for clarity)
passed STC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 65405 W: 12454 L: 12384 D: 40567
Ptnml(0-2): 920, 7256, 16285, 7286, 944
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e441a3be70d848499f63d15
passed LTC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 27096 W: 3477 L: 3413 D: 20206
Ptnml(0-2): 128, 2215, 8776, 2292, 122
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e44e277e70d848499f63d63
The incorrectly named VALUE_MATE_IN_MAX_PLY and VALUE_MATED_IN_MAX_PLY
were renamed into VALUE_TB_WIN_IN_MAX_PLY and VALUE_TB_LOSS_IN_MAX_PLY,
and correclty defined VALUE_MATE_IN_MAX_PLY and VALUE_MATED_IN_MAX_PLY
were introduced.
One further (corner case) mistake using these constants was fixed (go
mate X), which could lead to a premature return if X > MAX_PLY / 2,
but TB were present.
Thanks to @svivanov72 for one of the reports and help fixing the issue.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2552
Bench: 4932981
Currently on a normal bench run in ~0,7% of cases 'improving' is set to
true although the static eval isn't improving at all, just keeping
equal. It looks like the strict gt-operator is more appropriate here,
since it returns to 'improving' its literal meaning without sideffects.
STC {-1.00,3.00} failed yellow:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e1ec38c8fd5f550e4ae1c28
LLR: -2.93 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.00,3.00}
Total: 53155 W: 10170 L: 10109 D: 32876
Ptnml(0-2): 863, 6282, 12251, 6283, 892
non-regression LTC passed:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e1f1c0d8fd5f550e4ae1c41
LLR: 2.98 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 23961 W: 3114 L: 3018 D: 17829
Ptnml(0-2): 163, 2220, 7114, 2298, 170
CLoses https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2496
bench: 4561386
Based on recent improvement of futility pruning by @locutus2 : we lower
the futility margin to apply it for more nodes but as a compensation
we also lower the history threshold to apply it to less nodes. Further
work in tweaking constants can always be done - numbers are guessed
"by hand" and are not results of some tuning, maybe there is some more
Elo to squeeze from this part of code.
Passed STC
LLR: 2.98 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.00,3.00}
Total: 15300 W: 3081 L: 2936 D: 9283
Ptnml(0-2): 260, 1816, 3382, 1900, 290
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e18da3b27dab692fcf9a158
Passed LTC
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {0.00,2.00}
Total: 108670 W: 14509 L: 14070 D: 80091
Ptnml(0-2): 813, 10259, 31736, 10665, 831
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e18fc9627dab692fcf9a180
Bench: 4643972
This patch makes Stockfish search same depth again if > 60% of optimum time is
already used, instead of trying the next iteration. The idea is that the next
iteration will generally take about the same amount of time as has already been
used in total. When we are likely to begin the last iteration, as judged by total
time taken so far > 0.6 * optimum time, searching the last depth again instead of
increasing the depth still helps the other threads in lazy SMP and prepares better
move ordering for the next moves.
STC :
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.00,3.00}
Total: 13436 W: 2695 L: 2558 D: 8183
Ptnml(0-2): 222, 1538, 3087, 1611, 253
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e1618a761fe5f83a67dd964
LTC :
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {0.00,2.00}
Total: 32160 W: 4261 L: 4047 D: 23852
Ptnml(0-2): 211, 2988, 9448, 3135, 247
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e162ca061fe5f83a67dd96d
The code was revised as suggested by @vondele for multithreading:
STC (8 threads):
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {0.00,2.00}
Total: 16640 W: 2049 L: 1885 D: 12706
Ptnml(0-2): 119, 1369, 5158, 1557, 108
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e19826a2cc590e03c3c2f52
LTC (8 threads):
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.00,3.00}
Total: 16536 W: 2758 L: 2629 D: 11149
Ptnml(0-2): 182, 1758, 4296, 1802, 224
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5e18b91a27dab692fcf9a140
Thanks to those discussing Stockfish lazy SMP on fishcooking which made me
try this, and to @vondele for suggestions and doing related tests.
See full discussion in the pull request thread:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2482
Bench: 4586187
This updates estimates from 1.5 year ago, and adds missing terms. All estimates
from tests run on fishtest at 10+0.1 (STC), 20000 games, error bars +- 3 Elo,
see the original message in the pull request for the full list of tests.
Noteworthy changes are step 7 (futility pruning) going from ~30 to ~50 Elo
and step 13 (pruning at shallow depth) going from ~170 to ~200 Elo.
Full list of tests: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2401
@Rocky640 made the suggestion to look at time control dependence of these terms.
I picked two large terms (early futility pruning and singular extension), so with
small relative error. It turns out it is actually quite interesting (see figure 1).
Contrary to my expectation, the Elo gain for early futility pruning is pretty time
control sensitive, while singular extension gain is not.
Figure 1: TC dependence of two search terms

Going back to the old measurement of futility pruning (30 Elo vs today 50 Elo),
the code is actually identical but the margins have changed. It seems like a nice
example of how connected terms in search really are, i.e. the value of early futility
pruning increased significantly due to changes elsewhere in search.
No functional change.
User "adentong" reported recently of a game where Stockfish blundered a game
in a tournament because during a search there was an hash-table issue for
positions inside the tree very close to the 50-moves draw rule. This is part
of a problem which is commonly referred to as the Graph History Interaction (GHI),
and is difficult to solve in computer chess because storing the 50-moves counter
in the hash-table loses Elo in general.
Links:
Issue 2451 : https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/2451
About the GHI : https://www.chessprogramming.org/Graph_History_Interaction
This patch tries to address the issue in this particular game and similar
reported games: it prevents that values from the transposition table are
getting used when the 50-move counter is close to reaching 100 (). The idea
is that in such cases values from previous searches, with a much lower 50-move
count, become less and less reliable.
More precisely, the heuristic we use in this patch is that we don't take the
transposition table cutoff when we have reached a 45-moves limit, but let the
search continue doing its job. There is a possible slowdown involved, but it will
also help to find either a draw when it thought to be losing, or a way to avoid
the draw by 50-move rule. This heuristics probably will not fix all possible cases,
but seems to be working reasonably well in practice while not losing too much Elo.
Passed non-regression tests:
STC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 274452 W: 59700 L: 60075 D: 154677
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5df546116932658fe9b451bf
LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 95235 W: 15297 L: 15292 D: 64646
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5df69c926932658fe9b4520e
Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2453
Bench: 4586187
This patch simplifies latest @MJZ1977 elo gainer. Seems like PvNode check in
condition of last capture extension is not needed. Note - even if this is a
simplification it actually causes this extension to be applied more often, thus
strengthening effect of @MJZ1977's patch.
passed STC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5deb9a3eb7bdefd50db28d0e
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 80244 W: 17421 L: 17414 D: 45409
passed LTC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5deba860b7bdefd50db28d11
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 21506 W: 3565 L: 3446 D: 14495
Bench: 5097036
As reported on the forum it is possible, on very rare occasions, that we are
trying to print a PV line with an invalid previousScore, although this line
has a valid actual score. This patch fixes output of PV lines with invalid
scores in a MultiPV search. This is a follow-up patch to 8b15961 and makes
the fix finally complete.
The reason is the i <= pvIdx condition which probably is a leftover from the
times there was a special root search function. This check is no longer needed
today and prevents PV lines past the current one (current pvIdx) to be flagged
as updated even though they do have a valid score.
8b15961349https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/fishcooking/PrnoDLvMvro
No functional change.
the removed line is not needed, since with the conditions on SE, eval
equals ttValue (except inCheck), which must be larger than beta if the second condition
is true.
The removed line is also incorrect as eval might be VALUE_NONE at this
location if inCheck. This removal addresses part of https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2406#issuecomment-552642608
No functional change.
This patch measures how frequently search is exploring new configurations.
This is done be computing a running average of ttHit. The ttHitAverage rate
is somewhat low (e.g. 30% for startpos) in the normal case, while it can be
very high if no progress is made (e.g. 90% for the fortress I used for testing).
This information can be used to influence search. In this patch, by adjusting
reductions if the rate > 50%. A first version (using a low ttHitAverageResolution
and this 50% threshold) passed testing:
STC
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-1.50,4.50]
Total: 26425 W: 5837 L: 5650 D: 14938
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5dcede8b0ebc5902563258fa
LTC
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,3.50]
Total: 32313 W: 5392 L: 5128 D: 21793
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5dcefb1f0ebc590256325c0e
However, as discussed in pull request 2414, using a larger ttHitAverageResolution
gives a better approximation of the underlying distributions. This needs a slight
adjustment for the threshold as the new distributions are shifted a bit compared
to the older ones, and this threshold seemingly is sensitive (we used 0.53125 here).
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2414
This final version also passed testing, and is used for the patch:
STC
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-1.50,4.50]
Total: 16025 W: 3555 L: 3399 D: 9071
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5dd070b90ebc5902579e20c2
LTC
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,3.50]
Total: 37576 W: 6277 L: 5998 D: 25301
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5dd0f58e6f544e798086f224
Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2414
Bench: 4989584
The removed lines approximately duplicate equivalent logic in the movePicker.
Adjust the futility_move_count to componsate for some difference
(the movePicker prunes one iteration of the move loop later).
Passed STC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 8114 W: 1810 L: 1663 D: 4641
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5dc6afe60ebc5902562bd318
Passed LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 89956 W: 14473 L: 14460 D: 61023
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5dc6bdcf0ebc5902562bd3c0
Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2407
Bench: 4256440
---------------------
How to continue from there?
It would be interesting to see if we can extract some Elo gain
from the new futility_move_count formula, for instance by somehow
incorporating the final -1 in the 5 constant, or adding a linear
term to the quadratics...
```
futility_move_count = (5 + depth * depth) * (1 + improving) / 2 - 1
```
Current master 648c7ec25d will generate an
incorrect mate score for:
```
setoption name Hash value 8
setoption name Threads value 1
position fen 8/1p2KP2/1p4q1/1Pp5/2P5/N1Pp1k2/3P4/1N6 b - - 76 40
go depth 49
```
even though the position is a draw. Generally, SF tries to display only
proven mate scores, so this is a bug.
This was posted http://www.talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=72166
by Uri Blass, with the correct analysis that this must be related to the
50 moves draw rule being ignored somewhere.
Indeed, this is possible as positions and there eval are stored in the TT,
without reference to the 50mr counter. Depending on the search path followed
a position can thus be mate or draw in the TT (GHI or Graph history interaction).
Therefore, to prove mate lines, the TT content has to be used with care. Rather
than ignoring TT content in general or for mate scores (which impact search or
mate finding), it is possible to be more selective. In particular, @WOnder93
suggested to only ignore the TT if the 50mr draw ply is closer than the mate
ply. This patch implements this idea, by clamping the eval in the TT to
+-VALUE_MATED_IN_MAX_PLY. This retains the TTmove, but causes a research of
these lines (with the current 50mr counter) as needed.
This patch hardly ever affects search (as indicated by the unchanged
bench), but fixes the testcase. As the conditions are very specific,
also mate finding will almost never be less efficient (testing welcome).
It was also shown to pass STC and LTC non-regression testing, in a form
using if/then/else instead of ternary operators:
STC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 93605 W: 15346 L: 15340 D: 62919
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5db45bb00ebc5908127538d4
LTC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 33873 W: 7359 L: 7261 D: 19253
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5db4c8940ebc5902d6b146fc
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/2370
Bench: 4362323
Make dynamic contempt weight factor dependent on static contempt so that higher
static contempt implies less dynamic contempt and vice versa. For default contempt
24 this is a non-functional change. But tests with contempt 0 shows an elo gain.
Also today is my birthday so i have already give to myself a gift with this patch :-)!
Further proceedings:
in the past we checked for default contempt that it doesn't regress against
contempt 0. Now that the later is stronger and the former is the same strength
this should be rechecked. Perhaps the default contempt have to be lowered.
It would be interesting to get some idea of the impact of this patch outside
of the 0-24 contempt range.
STC: (both with contempt=0)
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-1.50,4.50]
Total: 21912 W: 3898 L: 3740 D: 14274
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5db74b6f0ebc5902d1f37405
LTC: (both with contempt=0)
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,3.50]
Total: 27172 W: 3350 L: 3126 D: 20696
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5db760020ebc5902d1f375d0
Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2382
No functional change (for current default contempt 24).
This PR refactors update_quiet_stats, update_capture_stats and search to more clearly reflect what is actually done.
Effectively, all stat updates that need to be done after search is finished and a bestmove is found,
are collected in a new function ```final_stats_update()```. This shortens our main search routine, and simplifies ```update_quiet_stats```.
The latter function is now more easily reusable with fewer arguments, as the handling of ```quietsSearched``` is only needed in ```final_stats_update```.
```update_capture_stats```, which was only called once is now integrated in ```final_stats_update```, which allows for removing a branch and reusing some ```stat_bonus``` calls. The need for refactoring was also suggested by the fact that the comments of ```update_quiet_stats``` and ```update_capture_stats``` were incorrect (e.g. ```update_capture_stats``` was called, correctly, also when the bestmove was a quiet and not a capture).
passed non-regression STC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 75196 W: 16364 L: 16347 D: 42485
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5db004ec0ebc5902c06db9e1
The diff is most easily readable as ```git diff master --patience```
No functional change