Fail-highs and fail-lows

Discussion of chess software programming and technical issues.

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Gerd Isenberg
Posts: 2251
Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:47 pm
Location: Hattingen, Germany

Re: Fail-highs and fail-lows

Post by Gerd Isenberg »

John Major wrote:
Gerd Isenberg wrote: You should use < alpha, == alpha is not a fail low.
Or,
< alpha when using fail-soft, <= alpha when using fail-hard
Nope, I was wrong, "score == alpha" is a fail low of course - in fail-soft and fail-hard. But we don't need to re-search if we set root-alpha at the start of a new iteration to an exact or lower bound mate score found in previous iteration - if we trust that score.

That has nothing to do with fail-hard or soft. In fail-hard, "score < alpha" does not occur, but "score == alpha" has the same meaning of an upper bound - score might be less.