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>
Instead of loop across all legal moves to find a mate
loop across possible check moves only.
This reduces more then 10 times the number of moves to
check for a possible mate.
Also rename generate_checks() in generate_non_capture_checks()
so to better clarify what the function does.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Avoid calculating piece attacks if there aren't
available check sqaures for the given piece.
About 15% of cases. Not a biggie but still something
especially in the middle game where king is well covered
inside his castle.
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>
Check all fail highs in assumed PV with greater care (fruit/Toga already does this).
Add a flag when aspiration search fails high at ply 1 to prevent search to
be terminated prematurely.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This reverts commit 55dd98f7c717b94a659931cd20e088334b1cf7a6.
Revert fallback-system for root_search
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
However also this patch is immediately reverted. For three reasons:
1) the case it affects is very rare (and then we are likely to lose anyway),
so we can well live without this.
2) Because the case is so rare it's hard to test this change properly.
3) To perform fallback search, we must reset so many global variables that this
patch is very likely both buggy and extremely bad style.
Consider including this again if we clean-up global variables one day...
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
However just after finished writing this patch I realized that this
is not the way to go. So this will be immediately reverted.
(Just save this here in git in case I change my mind later :) )
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Implement system where aspiration search window is calculated using
values from previous iterations.
And then some crazy experimental stuff: If search fails low at the root,
don't widen window, but continue and hope we will find a better move
with given window. If search fails high at the root, cut immediately,
add some more time and start new iteration.
Note: this patch is not complete implementation, but a first test
for this idea. There are many FIXMEs left around. Most importantly
how to deal with the situation when we don't have any move!
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Sometimes C++ can be really bad!
In this case an hard coded c string selects Option c'tor
with int argument instead of the std::string one becuase
it is considered a better matching by the compiler.
Fix the bug changing the argument type from std::string to
const char* so to be a better match then the int one.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Store boolean values as "1" and "0" instead of "true" and "false"
and convert back to UCI protocol convention when needed.
This is simpler then the other way around.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Apart from the teoretical speed increase, the main reason
of this patch is a good amount of code cleanup.
Note that now UCI options are printed in alphabetical
order and not in insertion order as before. Next patch
will take care of restoring old behaviour.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
In null move search do not jump directly in
qsearch() from depth(4*OnePly), but only
from depth(3*OnePly).
After 999 games at 1+0: +248 -224 =527 +8ELO
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
It doesn't seem to work against Toga. After more then 400 games
we are at -13 ELO while, without it we are at + 5 ELO after 1000
games.
So revert for now to keep code simple.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
MSVC gives:
warning C4146: unary minus operator applied to unsigned type,
result still unsigned
When finds -b where b is an unsigned integer. So rewrite the two's
complement in a way to avoid the warning. Theoretically the new
version is slower, but in practice changes nothing.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Strangely enough it seems that optimization doesn't work.
After 760 games at 1+0: +155 -184 =421 -13 ELO
Probably the overhead, although small, for setting the flag
is not compensated by the saved evaluation call.
This could be due to the fact that after a TT value is stored,
if and when we hit the position again the stored TT value is
actually used as a cut-off so that we don't need to go on
with another search and evaluation is avoided in any case.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
If we want to store a value of type VALUE_TYPE_EVAL for
a given position and we found an already exsisting entry
for the same position then we skip.
We don't want to overwrite a more valuable score with a
lesser one. Note that also in case the exsisting entry is
of VALUE_TYPE_EVAL type the overwrite is unuseful because
we would store the same score again.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
When the stored TT value equals the static value set a
proper flag so to not call evaluation() if we hit the
same position again but use the stored TT value instead.
This is another trick to avoid calling costly evaluation()
in qsearch.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Fix a bug in the way a move is stored and read in a TT entry.
We use a mask of 19 bits insteaad of 17 so that the last
two bits in the TT entry end up to be random data.
This bug will bite us when we will use these two until now
unused bits.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
After testing it seems patch is bad:
After 999 games 1+0: +242 -271 =486 -10 ELO
So restore saving of TT at the end but using new Joona
idea of storing as VALUE_TYPE_UPPER/VALUE_TYPE_LOWER instead
of VALUE_TYPE_EXACT.
Some optimization is still possible but better test new ideas
one by one.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Instead of just drop evaluation score after stand pat
logic save it in TT so to be reused if the same position
occurs again.
Note that we NEVER use the cached value apart to avoid an
evaluation call, in particulary we never return to caller
after a succesful tt hit.
To accomodate this a new value type VALUE_TYPE_EVAL has been
introduced so that ok_to_use_TT() always returns false.
With this patch we cut about 15% of total evaluation calls.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
It is now disabled by default due to bad results
against a pool of engines...more testing is needed tough.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This is the only "correct" exact value we can store.
Otherwise there could be spurious failed high/low nodes.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Some changes to the zobrist keys, to make them identical
to those used by Glaurung 1.
The only purpose is to make it possible for both programs
to use the same opening book.
Merged from Glaurung current development snapshot.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
