Computers have problems with certain positions

Discussion of anything and everything relating to chess playing software and machines.

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George Tsavdaris
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Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:35 pm

Re: Computers have problems with certain positions

Post by George Tsavdaris »

Uri wrote:
Mike S. wrote: Also, in Fritz it is useful to select "Scroll new moves only" which will skip useless in-between lines where the first move was not changed. The first occurance with the decision time will be kept. That helps to keep the postings smaller and easier to read (sometimes, engines will produce an output of dozens of lines in the first few seconds, always with the same pm).
Ok, thanks Mike. By pm you mean program memory?
I guess he meant PV, that is principal variation....
Or perhaps he meant bm, for best move.... :roll:
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Mike S.
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Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 5:33 am

Re: Computers have problems with certain positions

Post by Mike S. »

pm = primary move = the first move of the primary variation (pv)

So, with "scroll new moves only" you will get the FIRST line when the engine has switched to that move, and the CURRENT line as long as the first move is the same. - IF you are interested in all changes of later moves in the pv which occur throughout the search process, than you need to switch off that option. But I think that are very seldom cases where that is interesting. Normally, decision time (in the first line for that pm) and current/latest line will be enough.

Unfortunately, ChessBase didn't make that option on by default, which results in very much useless garbage data being posted. Also, you see which people look at the context menu they get and think about what is there, and which don't.

They same could be said about Arena's nightmare function to put all complete pv for each move into the PGN, by default. That is what we call a "cemetary of data" in german. Giant, useless amount of data nobody wants. I have seen people posting that hopelessly, even AFTER they were informed that they should switch that nonsense off. :mrgreen: Some have trouble to configure things properly.
Regards, Mike