Extend castling independently of singular extension

A curious feature of Stockfish's current extension code is its repeated
use of "else if." In most cases, this makes no functional difference,
because no more than one extension is applied; once one extension has
been applied, the remaining ones can be safely ignored.

However, if most singular extension search conditions are true, except
"value < singularBeta", no non-singular extensions (e.g., castling) can
be performed!

Three tests were submitted, for three of Stockfish's four non-singular
extensions. I excluded the shuffle extension, because historically there
have been concerns about the fragility of its conditions, and I did not
want to risk causing any serious search problems.

- Modifying the passed pawn extension appeared roughly neutral at STC. At
best, it appeared to be an improvement of less than 1 Elo.
- Modifying check extension performed very poorly at STC
- Modifying castling extension (this patch) produced a long "yellow" run
 at STC (insufficient to pass, but positive score) and a strong LTC.

In simple terms, prior to this patch castling extension was occasionally
not applied during search--on castling moves. The effect of this patch is
to perform castling extension on more castling moves. It does so without
adding any code complexity, simply by replacing an "else if" with "if" and
reordering some existing code.

STC:
LLR: -2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 108114 W: 23877 L: 23615 D: 60622
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5d8d86bd0ebc590f3beb0c88

LTC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 20862 W: 3517 L: 3298 D: 14047
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5d8d99cd0ebc590f3beb1899

Bench: 3728191

--------

Where do we go from here?

- It seems strange to me that check extension performed so poorly -- clearly
some of the singular extension conditions are also very important for check
extension. I am not an expert in search, and I do not have any intuition
about which of the eight conditions is/are the culprit. I will try a
succession of eight STC tests to identify the relevant conditions, then try
to replicate this PR for check extension.

- Recent tests interacting with the castle extension may deserve retesting.
I will shortly resubmit a few of my recent castling extension tweaks, rebased
on this PR/commit.

My deepest thanks to @noobpwnftw for the extraordinary CPU donation, and to
all our other fishtest volunteers, who made it possible for a speculative LTC
to pass in 70 minutes!

Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2331

diff --git a/src/search.cpp b/src/search.cpp
index 2d5fb6305b8d84dde21795edd409d2af2d88285c..01de12a4cea99b662ce0134349be1b3c3dadaeb5 100644 (file)
--- a/src/search.cpp
+++ b/src/search.cpp
@@ -997,10 +997,6 @@ moves_loop: // When in check, search starts from here
                && (pos.is_discovery_check_on_king(~us, move) || pos.see_ge(move)))
           extension = ONE_PLY;
 
-      // Castling extension
-      else if (type_of(move) == CASTLING)
-          extension = ONE_PLY;
-
       // Shuffle extension
       else if (   PvNode
                && pos.rule50_count() > 18
@@ -1013,6 +1009,10 @@ moves_loop: // When in check, search starts from here
                && pos.advanced_pawn_push(move)
                && pos.pawn_passed(us, to_sq(move)))
           extension = ONE_PLY;
+          
+      // Castling extension
+      if (type_of(move) == CASTLING)
+          extension = ONE_PLY;
 
       // Calculate new depth for this move
       newDepth = depth - ONE_PLY + extension;