Remove Null Move Pruning material threshold

On November 30th, @xoto10 experimented with removing this threshold,
but the simplification barely failed LTC. I was inspired to try various
[0, 4] tweaks to increase its value, which would narrow the effects of
this threshold without removing it entirely. Various values repeatedly
led to Elo gains at both STC and LTC, most of which were insufficient
to pass.

After a couple of weeks, I tried again to find an Elo-gaining tweak
but noticed that I could raise the threshold higher and higher without
regression. I decided to try removing it entirely--forgetting that
@xoto10 had already attempted this. However, this now performs much
better at both STC and LTC, producing a STC Elo gain and also potentially
a smaller LTC one.

The reason appears to be a recent change in master (e8ffca3) near
this code, which interacts with this patch. This simplification
governs the conditions under which that patch's effects are applied.
Something non-obvious about that change has significantly improved
the performance of this simplification.

I recognize and thank @xoto10, who originally had this idea. Since
I ran several LTCs recently (to determine whether to open this PR,
or one for a related [0, 4]), I would also like to acknowledge the
other developers and CPU donors for their patience. Thank you all!

STC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 13445 W: 3000 L: 2862 D: 7583
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5c11f01b0ebc5902ba11a6b8

LTC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 33868 W: 5663 L: 5563 D: 22642
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5c11ffe90ebc5902ba11a8a9

Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1870

Bench: 3343286

diff --git a/src/search.cpp b/src/search.cpp
index c48865c637210aa7c41defa21877d936884889ae..7876f9314ad93e56242c569e0f79a26e0c7a5498 100644 (file)
--- a/src/search.cpp
+++ b/src/search.cpp
@@ -960,7 +960,7 @@ moves_loop: // When in check, search starts from here
       {
           if (   !captureOrPromotion
               && !givesCheck
-              && (!pos.advanced_pawn_push(move) || pos.non_pawn_material() >= Value(5000)))
+              && !pos.advanced_pawn_push(move))
           {
               // Move count based pruning (~30 Elo)
               if (moveCountPruning)