Isolated and Passed Pawn Penalties

Discussion of chess software programming and technical issues.

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oriyonay
Posts: 32
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2021 5:46 am
Full name: ori yonay

Isolated and Passed Pawn Penalties

Post by oriyonay »

Hi there - it's been a while since I've posted, I hope you've all been well!
I've been thoroughly testing my engine and she's at ~2300 elo! Through this process I've realized that most of my evaluation terms besides material/PSQT/bishop pair bonus have actually significantly harmed the performance of my engine, and I've been pulling my hair trying to figure out why. To me, my code logic is exactly identical to VICE's (and same for the semi and fully-open rook files bonus). What am I missing here?

Have a lovely rest of your day!
- Ori :)
Sven
Posts: 4052
Joined: Thu May 15, 2008 9:57 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany
Full name: Sven Schüle

Re: Isolated and Passed Pawn Penalties

Post by Sven »

oriyonay wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 7:24 am significantly harmed the performance of my engine
Do you mean speed or strength?

Regarding passed pawns, I'd make a wild guess: your square indices are A8=0, ..., A1=56, ... and your RANK_NO() returns 2 for squares on 7th rank and 7 for squares on 2nd rank, but PASSED_PAWN_BONUS[2]=10 and PASSED_PAWN_BONUS[7]=150, so it seems that passers are not encouraged to advance?
Sven Schüle (engine author: Jumbo, KnockOut, Surprise)