Marco Costalba [Mon, 25 May 2009 14:48:47 +0000 (15:48 +0100)]
Passed pawns evaluation tweak
Do not penalize if in our adavncing pawn's path there are
non-pawns enemy pieces. Especially if they can be attacked
by us.
Patch is mine, but original idea and also fixing of a first, wrong,
version of the patch is from Eelco de Groot.
Tests with Joona framework seems to confirm patch is good
Results for patch 'disabled' based on 5776 games: Win percentage:
41.309 (+- 0.526) [+- 1.053]
Results for patch 'enabled' based on 6400 games: Win percentage:
42.422 (+- 0.500) [+- 1.000]
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Marco Costalba [Mon, 25 May 2009 06:49:50 +0000 (07:49 +0100)]
Split killer moves from non-captures
In MovePicker consider killer moves as a separate
phase from non-capture picking.
Note that this change guarantees that killer1 is always
tried before killer2. Until now, because scoring difference
of the two moves was just 1 point, if psqt tables of killer1
gave a lower value then killer2, the latter was tried as first.
After 999 games at 1+0 we have
Mod vs Orig: +245 =527 -227 +6 ELO
Not a lot but patch is anyhow something worth to have.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Marco Costalba [Fri, 8 May 2009 08:53:45 +0000 (10:53 +0200)]
Micro optimize generate_pawn_checks()
Use a better condition to find candidate direct check pawns.
In particular consider only pawns in the front ranks of the
enemy king, this greatly reduces pawns candidates bitboard
that now is empty more then 90% of the time so that we
can early skip further tests.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Marco Costalba [Fri, 1 May 2009 08:17:34 +0000 (10:17 +0200)]
Sort moves just after scoring
Instead of a delayed selection sort so that the highest
score move is picked up from the list when needed, sort all
the moves up front just after score them.
Selection sort is O(n*n) while std::sort is O(n*log n), it
is true that delayed selection allows us to just pick the move
until a cut off occurs or up to a given limit (12), but with
an average of 30 non capture-moves delayed pick become slower
just after 5-6 moves and we now pick up to 12.
Profiling seem to prove this idea and movepick.cpp is now 10%
faster.
Also tests seem to confirm this:
After 700 games at 1+0: Mod vs Orig +178 -160 =362 +9 ELO
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Marco Costalba [Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:55:38 +0000 (08:55 +0200)]
Do not razor after a null move
We don't want to return unproven null move fails high, so
that if a position is so good that null move fails high we
want to check this with real do_move() / undo_move() test,
not just razoring the position because, from the opponent
point of view, is very bad.
These are tests results at 1+0
Mod vs Orig +252 -264 =483 49.40%
Mod vs Toga II 1.4.1SE +365 -325 =309 52.00%
So it seems a very slightly regression regarding orig version (but
withing error bar) and a nice increase against Toga that is what we
are interested most. Orig version scores 49.75% against Toga, so
we welcome this change ;-)
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Marco Costalba [Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:51:11 +0000 (08:51 +0200)]
Merge Joona's razoring tweaks
After proof testing on 3 different engines these
are the results:
Stockfish - Toga II 1.4.1SE +130 -132 =132 49.75%
Stockfish - Deep Sieng 3.0 +145 -110 =150 54.45%
Stockfish - HIARCS 12 MP +94 -149 =150 43.00%
So it seems no regressions occurs, although also no
improvment. But anyhow this patch increases Stockfish
strenght against itself, so merge it.
Note that this patch not only adds back razoring at depth
one, but also increases razor depth limit from 3 to 4
because hard coded depth 4 limit is no more overwritten
by UCI parameter that otherwise defaults to 3.
Marco Costalba [Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:47:26 +0000 (08:47 +0200)]
Hardcode depth limit for selective search
Because futility margins array has a fixed size we cannot
arbitrarly choose or change the SelectiveDepth parameter,
otherwise we have a crash for values bigger then array size.
On the other hand tweaking of this parameter requires some
modification to the hardcoded margins, so makes sense to hard
code also this very bounded one.
Who wants to experiment is of course free to change the sources.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Marco Costalba [Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:23:30 +0000 (17:23 +0100)]
Small code tidy up and test results
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>
Razor again at depth one
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>
Marco Costalba [Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:03:33 +0000 (14:03 +0100)]
In qsearch store the cut move in TT
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>
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>
Implement a fallback system when aspiration search fails low and we are out of time.
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>
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>
projects / stockfish / log