Include some not fully supported levers in the (candidate) passed pawns
bitboard, if otherwise unblocked. Maybe levers are usually very short
lived, and some inaccuracy in the lever balance for the definition of
candidate passed pawns just triggers a deeper search.
Here is a example of a case where the patch has an effect on the definition
of candidate passers: White c5/e5 pawns, against Black d6 pawn. Let's say
we want to test if e5 is a candidate passer. The previous master looks
only at files d, e and f (which is already very good) and reject e5 as
a candidate. However, the lever d6 is challenged by 2 pawns, so it should
not fully count. Indirectly, this patch will view such case (and a few more)
to be scored as candidates.
STC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5abcd55d0ebc5902926cf1e1
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 16492 W: 3419 L: 3198 D: 9875
LTC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5abce1360ebc5902926cf1e6
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 21156 W: 3201 L: 2990 D: 14965
This was inspired by this test of Jerry Donald Watson, except the case of
zero supporting pawns against two levers is excluded, and it seems that
not excluding that case is bad, while excluding is it beneficial. See the
following tests on fishtest:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1519http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5abccd850ebc5902926cf1ddhttp://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5abcdd490ebc5902926cf1e4
Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1521
Bench: 5568461
----
Comments by Jerry Donald Watson:
> My thinking as to why this works:
>
> The evaluation is either called in an interior node or in the qsearch.
> The calls at the end of the qsearch are the more important as they
> ultimately determine the scoring of each move, whereas the internal
> values are mainly used for pruning decisions with a margin. Some strong
> engines don't even call the eval at all nodes. Now the whole point of
> the qsearch is to find quiet positions where captures do not change the
> evaluation of the position with regards to the search bounds - i.e. if
> there were good captures they would be tried.* So when a candidate lever
> appears in the evaluation at the end of the qsearch, the qsearch has
> guaranteed that it cannot just be captured, or if it can, this does not
> take the score past the search bounds. Practically this may mean that
> the side with the candidate lever has the turn, or perhaps the stopping
> lever pawn is pinned, or that side is forced for other reasons to make
> some other move (e.g. d6 can only take one of the pawns in the example
> above).
>
> Hence granting the full score for only one lever defender makes some
> sense, at least, to me.
>
> IMO this is also why huge bonuses for possible captures in the evaluation
> (e.g. threat on queen and our turn), etc. don't tend to work. Such things
> are best left to the search to figure out.
To more clearly distinguish them from "const" local variables, this patch
defines compile-time local constants as constexpr. This is consistent with
the definition of PvNode as constexpr in search() and qsearch(). It also
makes the code more robust, since the compiler will now check that those
constants are indeed compile-time constants.
We can go even one step further and define all the evaluation and search
compile-time constants as constexpr.
In generate_castling() I replaced "K" with "step", since K was incorrectly
capitalised (in the Chess960 case).
In timeman.cpp I had to make the non-local constants MaxRatio and StealRatio
constepxr, since otherwise gcc would complain when calculating TMaxRatio and
TStealRatio. (Strangely, I did not have to make Is64Bit constexpr even though
it is used in ucioption.cpp in the calculation of constexpr MaxHashMB.)
I have renamed PieceCount to pieceCount in material.h, since the values of
the array are not compile-time constants.
Some compile-time constants in tbprobe.cpp were overlooked. Sides and MaxFile
are not compile-time constants, so were renamed to sides and maxFile.
Non-functional change.
We give a S(21,11) bonus for knight threats on the next moves
against enemy queen. The threats are from squares which are
"not strongly protected" and which may be empty, contain enemy
pieces or even one of our piece at the moment (N,B,Q,R) -- hence
be two-steps threats in the later case because we will have to
move our piece and *then* attack the enemy queen with the knight.
STC: http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a9e442e0ebc590297cb6162
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 35129 W: 7346 L: 7052 D: 20731
LTC: http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a9e6e620ebc590297cb617f
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 42442 W: 6695 L: 6414 D: 29333
How to continue from there?
• Trying to refine the threat condition ("not strongly protected")
• Trying the two-steps idea for bishops or rooks threats against queen
Bench: 6051247
In pawn structures like white pawns f6,h6 against black pawns f7,g6,h7
the attack on the king is blocked by the own pawns. So decrease the
penalty for king safety.
See diagram and discussion in
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1434
A sample position that this patch wants to avoid is the following
1rr2bk1/3q1p1p/2n1bPpP/pp1pP3/2pP4/P1P1B3/1PBQN1P1/1K3R1R w - - 0 1
White pawn storm on the king side was a disaster, it locked the king
side completely. Therefore, all the king tropism bonus that white have
on the king side are useless, and kingadjacent attacks too. Master
gives White a static +4.5 advantage, but White cannot win that game.
The patch is lowering this evaluation artefact.
STC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 16467 W: 3750 L: 3537 D: 9180
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a92102d0ebc590297cc87d0
LTC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 64242 W: 11130 L: 10745 D: 42367
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a923dc80ebc590297cc8806
This version includes reformatting and speed optimization by Alain Savard.
Bench: 5643527
The previous asymmetry measure of the pawn structure only used to
consider the number of pawns on semi-opened files in the position.
With this patch we also increase the measure by the number of passed
pawns for both players.
Many thanks to the community for the nice feedback on the previous
version, with special mentions to Alain Savard and Marco Costalba
for clarity and speed suggestions.
STC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 13146 W: 3038 L: 2840 D: 7268
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a91dd0c0ebc590297cc877e
LTC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 27776 W: 4771 L: 4536 D: 18469
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a91fdd50ebc590297cc879b
How to continue after this patch?
Stockfish will now evaluate more positions with passed pawns, so
tuning the passed pawns values may bring Elo. The patch has also
consequences on the initiative term, where we might want to give
different weights to passed pawns and semi-openfiles (idea by
Stefano Cardanobile).
Bench: 5302866
The previous asymmetry measure of the pawn structure only used to
consider the number of pawns on semi-opened files in the postions.
With this patch we also increase the measure by the number of passed
pawns for both players.
STC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 13146 W: 3038 L: 2840 D: 7268
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a91dd0c0ebc590297cc877e
LTC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 27776 W: 4771 L: 4536 D: 18469
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a91fdd50ebc590297cc879b
How to continue from there: Stockfish will now evaluate more positions
with passed pawns, so tuning the passed pawns values may bring Elo.
The patch also has consequences on the initiative term.
Bench: 5302866
This is one of the most difficult to understand but also
most important and speed critical functions of SF.
This patch rewrites some part of it to hopefully
make it clearer and drop some redundant variables
in the process.
Same speed than master (or even a bit more).
Thanks to Chris Cain for useful feedback.
No functional change.
Where variable names are explicitly incorrect, I feel morally obligated to at least
suggest an alternative. There are many, but these two are especially egregious.
No functional change.
Currently the NORTH/WEST/SOUTH/EAST values are of type Square, but conceptually they are not squares but directions. This patch separates these values into a Direction enum and overloads addition and subtraction to allow adding a Square to a Direction (to get a new Square).
I have also slightly trimmed the possible overloadings to improve type safety. For example, it would normally not make sense to add a Color to a Color or a Piece to a Piece, or to multiply or divide them by an integer. It would also normally not make sense to add a Square to a Square.
This is a non-functional change.
Use different penalties for weaknesses in the pawn shelter
depending on whether it is on the king's file or not.
STC
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 71617 W: 13471 L: 13034 D: 45112
LTC
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 48708 W: 6463 L: 6187 D: 36058
Bench: 5322108
A pawn (according to all the searched positions of a bench run) is not supported 85% of the time,
(in current master it is either isolated, backward or "unsupported").
So it made sense to try moving the S(17, 8) "unsupported" penalty value into the base pawn value hoping for a more representative pawn value, and accordingly
a) adjust backward and isolated so that they stay more or less the same as master
b) increase the mg connected bonus in the supported case by S(17, 0) and let the Connected formula find a suitable eg value according to rank.
Tested as a simplification SPRT(-3, 1)
Passed STC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5970dbd30ebc5916ff649dd6
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 19613 W: 3663 L: 3540 D: 12410
Passed LTC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/597137780ebc5916ff649de3
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 24721 W: 3306 L: 3191 D: 18224
Bench: 5581946
Closes#1179
StepAttacks[] is misdesigned, the color dependance is specific
to pawns, and trying to generalise to king and knights, proves
neither useful nor convinient in practice.
So this patch reformats the code with the following changes:
- Use PieceType instead of Piece in attacks_() functions
- Use PseudoAttacks for KING and KNIGHT
- Rename StepAttacks[] into PawnAttacks[]
Original patch and idea from Alain Savard.
No functional change.
Closes#1086
This patch removes the empty rows at the beginning and at the end of
MobilityBonus[] and Protector[] arrays:
• reducing the size of MobilityBonus from 768 bytes to 512 bytes
• reducing the size of Protector from 1024 to 512 bytes
Also adds some comments and cleaner code for the arrays in pawns.cpp
No speed penalty (measured speed-up of 0.4%).
No functional change.
Closes#1018
Order the enum and the array the same way they appear around line 250.
Makes it much easier to follow.
Add comments in the array definition and critical rows.
Use same terminology as elsewhere in pawns.cpp
No functional change.
This patch tweaks some pawn values to favor flank attacks.
The first part of the patch increases the midgame psqt values of external pawns to launch more attacks (credits to user GuardianRM for this idea), while the second part increases the endgame connection values for pawns on upper ranks.
Passed STC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 34997 W: 6328 L: 6055 D: 22614
and LTC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 13844 W: 1832 L: 1650 D: 10362
Bench: 5884767
Rename shift_bb() to shift(), and DELTA_S to SOUTH, etc.
to improve code readability, especially in evaluate.cpp
when they are used together:
old b = shift_bb<DELTA_S>(pos.pieces(PAWN))
new b = shift<SOUTH>(pos.pieces(PAWN))
While there fix some small code style issues.
No functional change.
If the opponent has a cramped position, opening a file often
helps him/her to exchange pieces, so it makes sense to reduce
the space bonus if there are open files.
Credits: Leonardo Ljubičić for the strategic idea, Alain Savard for the
implementation of the open files calculation, "CrunchyNYC" for the
compensation of the numerator.
STC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 49112 W: 9239 L: 8900 D: 30973
LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 89415 W: 12014 L: 11601 D: 65800
Bench: 7591630
On top of the usual conditions
a) some opponent in front (but no lever)
b) some neighbours (in front) (but no neighbour behind or same rank)
c) < rank_5
to find out if a pawn is backward we look at the squares in front of this pawn to reach the same rank as the next neighbour.
In current master, a pawn is backward if any of those squares is controlled by an enemy pawn on an adjacent file
In this version, a pawn is ALSO backward if any of those squares is occupied by an enemy pawn.
STC:
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/56fe7efd0ebc59301a3541f1
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 19051 W: 3557 L: 3433 D: 12061
LTC:
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/56febc2d0ebc59301a354209
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 40810 W: 5619 L: 5526 D: 29665
Bench: 7525245
Resolves#614
Also a speedup(about 1%) on 64-bit w/o hardware popcnt
Retire Max15 and Full template parameters
(Contributed by Marco Costalba)
Now that we have just SW and HW versions, use
template default parameter to get rid of explicit
template parameters.
Retire bitcount.h and move the only defined
function to bitboard.h
No functional change
Resolves#620
