Use the whole kingRing for pawn attackers instead of only the squares directly
around the king. This tends to give quite a lot more kingAttackersCount, so to
compensate and to avoid raising the king danger too fast we lower the values
in the KingAttackWeights array a little bit.
STC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 51892 W: 10723 L: 10369 D: 30800
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5af6d4dd0ebc5968e652428e
LTC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 24536 W: 3737 L: 3515 D: 17284
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5af709890ebc5968e65242ac
Credits to user @xoroshiro for the idea of using the kingRing for pawn attackers.
How to continue? It seems that the KingAttackWeights[] array stores values
which are quite Elo-sensitive, yet they have not been tuned with SPSA recently.
There might be easy Elo points to get there.
Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1597
Bench: 5282815
This patch applies a S(10, 5) bonus for every square that is:
- Occupied by an enemy piece which is not a pawn
- Attacked exactly once by our pieces
- Defended exactly once by enemy pieces
The idea is that these pieces must be defended. Their defenders have
dramatically limited mobility, and they are vulnerable to our future
attack.
As with connectivity, there are probably many more tests to be run in
this area. In particular:
- I believe @snicolet's queen overload tests have demonstrated a potential
need for a queen overload bonus above and beyond this one; however, the
conditions for "overload" in this patch are different (excluding pieces
we attack twice). My next test after this is (hopefully) merged will be
to intersect the Bitboard I define here with the enemy's queen attacks and
attempt to give additional bonus.
- Perhaps we should exclude pieces attacked by pawns--can pawns really be
overloaded? Should they have the same weight, or less? This didn't work
with a previous version, but it could work with this one.
- More generally, different pieces may need more or less bonus. We could
change bonuses based on what type of enemy piece is being overloaded, what
type of friendly piece is attacking, and/or what type of piece is being
defended by the overloaded piece and attacked by us, or any intersection
of these three. For example, here attacked/defended pawns are excluded,
but they're not totally worthless targets, and could be added again with
a smaller bonus.
- This list is by no means exhaustive.
STC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 17439 W: 3599 L: 3390 D: 10450
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5ac78a2e0ebc59435923735e
LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 43304 W: 6533 L: 6256 D: 30515
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5ac7a1d80ebc59435923736f
Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1533
Bench: 5248871
----------------
This is my first time opening a PR, so I apologize if there are errors.
There are too many people to thank since I submitted my first test just
over a month ago. Thank you all for the warm welcome and here is to more
green patches!
In particular, I would like to thank:
- @crossbr, whose comment in a FishCooking thread first inspired me to
consider the overloading of pieces other than queens,
- @snicolet, whose queen overload tests inspired this one and served as
the base of my first overload attempts,
- @protonspring, whose connectivity tests inspired this one and who provided
much of the feedback needed to take this from red to green,
- @vondele, who kindly corrected me when I submitted a bad LTC test,
- @Rocky640, who has helped me over and over again in the past month.
Thank you all!
Add a logarithmic term in the optimism computation, increase
the maximal optimism and lower the contempt offset.
This increases the dynamics of the optimism aspects, giving
a boost for balanced positions without skewing too much on
unbalanced positions (but this version will enter panic mode
faster than previous master when behind, trying to draw faster
when slightly behind). This helps, since optimism is in general
a good thing, for instance at LTC, but too high optimism
rapidly contaminates play.
passed STC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 159343 W: 34489 L: 33588 D: 91266
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a8db9340ebc590297cc85b6
passed LTC:
LLR: 2.97 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 47491 W: 7825 L: 7517 D: 32149
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a9456a80ebc590297cc8a89
It must be mentioned that a version of the PR with contempt 0
did not pass STC [0,5]. The version in the patch, which uses
default contempt 12, was found to be as strong as current master
on different matches against SF7 and SF8, both at STC and LTC.
One drawback maybe is that it raises the draw rate in self-play
from 56% to 59%, giving a little bit less sensitivity for SF
developpers to find evaluation improvements by selfplay tests
in fishtest.
Possible further work:
• tune the values accurately, while keeping in mind the drawrate issue
• check whether it is possible to remove linear and offset term
• try to simplify the S-shape curve
Bench: 5934644
