It does the following:
- If a TB win or loss value allows an alpha or beta cutoff, the cutoff is taken.
- Otherwise, the search of the current subtree continues. In PV nodes, the final value returned is adjusted to reflect that the position is a TB win (or loss).
The patch also fixes a potential problem caused by root_probe() and root_probe_wdl() dirtying the root-move scores.
This patch removes the limitation of current master that a mate is never found if the root position is not yet in the TBs, but the path to mate at some point enters the TBs. The patch is intended to preserve the efficiency and effectiveness of the current TB probing approach.
No functional change (withouth TB)
Set the default contempt value of Stockfish to 20 centipawns.
The contempt feature of Stockfish tries to prevent the engine from
simplifying the position too quickly when it feels that it is very
slightly behind, instead keeping the tension a little bit longer.
Various tests in November 2017 have proved that our current imple-
mentation works well against SF7 (which is about 130 Elo weaker than
current master) and than the Elo gain is an increasing function of
contempt, going (against SF7) from +0 Elo when contempt is set at
zero centipawns, to +30 Elo when contempt is 40 centipawns.
See pull request 1325 for details:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1325
This november discussion left open the decision of which "default"
value for contempt we should use for Stockfish, taking into account
the various uses ofStockfish (opening preparation for humans, computer
online tournaments,analysis tool for web pages, human/computer play,
etc).
This pull request proposes to set the default contempt value of SF
to twenty centipawns, which turns out to be the highest value which
is not a regression against current master, as this seemed to be a
good compromise between risk and safety. A couple of SPRT[-3..1]
tests were done to bisect this value:
Contempt 10: http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a5d42d20ebc5902977e2901 (PASSED)
Contempt 15: http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a5d41740ebc5902977e28fa (PASSED)
Contempt 20: http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a5d42060ebc5902977e28fc (PASSED)
Contempt 25: http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a5d433f0ebc5902977e2904 (FAILED)
Surprisingly, a test at "very long time control" hinted that using
contempt 20 is not only be non-regressive against contempt 0, but
may actually exhibit some small Elo gain, giving a likehood of superio-
rity of 88.7% after 8500 games:
VLTC:
ELO: 2.28 +-3.7 (95%) LOS: 88.7%
Total: 8521 W: 1096 L: 1040 D: 6385
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a60b2820ebc590297b9b7e0
Finally, there was some concerns that a contempt value of 20 would
be worse than a value of 7, but a test with 20000 games at STC was
neutral:
STC:
ELO: 0.45 +-3.1 (95%) LOS: 61.2%
Total: 20000 W: 4222 L: 4196 D: 11582
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a64d2fd0ebc590297903868
See the comments in pull request 1361 for the long, nice discussion
(180 entries :-)) leading to the decision to propose contempt 20 as
the default value:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1361
Whether Stockfish should strictly adhere to the Komodo and Houdini
semantics and add the UCI commands to force the contempt to be White
in the so-called "analysis mode" is still under discussion, and may
be or may not be the object of a future commit.
Bench: 5783344
1. avoid recursive call of verification.
For the interested side to move recursion makes no sense.
For the other side it could make sense in case of mutual zugzwang,
but I was not able to figure out any concrete problematic position.
Allows the removal of 2 local variables.
2. avoid further reduction by removing R += ONE_PLY;
Benchmark with zugzwang-suite (see #1338), max 45 secs per position:
Patch solves 33 out of 37
Master solves 31 out of 37
STC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 76188 W: 13866 L: 13840 D: 48482
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a5612ed0ebc590297da516c
LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 40479 W: 5247 L: 5152 D: 30080
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a56f7d30ebc590299e4550e
bench: 5340015
as discussed in issue #1349, the way pages are allocated with calloc might imply some overhead on first write.
This overhead can be large and slow down the first search after a TT resize significantly, especially for large TT.
Using an explicit clear of the TT on resize fixes this problem.
Not implemented, but possibly useful for large TT, is to do this zero-ing using all search threads. Not only would this be faster, it could also lead to a more favorable memory allocation on numa systems with a first touch policy.
No functional change.
The heuristic to avoid thread binding if less than 8 threads are requested resulted in the first 7 threads not being bound.
The branch was verified to yield a roughly 13% speedup by @CoffeeOne on the appropriate hardware and OS, and an earlier version of this patch tested well on his machine:
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a3693480ebc590ccbb8be5a
ELO: 9.24 +-4.6 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 5000 W: 634 L: 501 D: 3865
To make sure all threads (including mainThread) are bound as soon as the total number exceeds 7, recreate all threads on a change of thread number.
To do this, unify Threads::init, Threads::exit and Threads::set are unified in a single Threads::set function that goes through the needed steps.
The code includes several suggestions from @joergoster.
Fixes issue #1312
No functional change
For efficiency reasons current master only allows for transposition table sizes that are N = 2^k in size, the index computation can be done efficiently as (hash % N) can be written instead as (hash & 2^k - 1). On a typical computer (with 4, 8... etc Gb of RAM), this implies roughly half the RAM is left unused in analysis.
This issue was mentioned on fishcooking by Mindbreaker:
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a3587de0ebc590ccbb8be04
Recently a neat trick was proposed to map a hash into the range [0,N[ more efficiently than (hash % N) for general N, nearly as efficiently as (hash % 2^k):
https://lemire.me/blog/2016/06/27/a-fast-alternative-to-the-modulo-reduction/
namely computing (hash * N / 2^32) for 32 bit hashes. This patch implements this trick and now allows for general hash sizes. Note that for N = 2^k this just amounts to using a different subset of bits from the hash. Master will use the lower k bits, this trick will use the upper k bits (of the 32 bit hash).
There is no slowdown as measured with [-3, 1] test:
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a3587de0ebc590ccbb8be04
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 128498 W: 23332 L: 23395 D: 81771
There are two (smaller) caveats:
1) the patch is implemented for a 32 bit hash (so that a 64 bit multiply can be used), this effectively limits the number of clusters that can be used to 2^32 or to 128Gb of transpostion table. That's a change in the maximum allowed TT size, which could bother those using 256Gb or more regularly.
2) Already in master, an excluded move is hashed into the position key in rather simple way, essentially only affecting the lower 16 bits of the key. This is OK in master, since bits 0-15 end up in the index, but not in the new scheme, which picks the higher bits. This is 'fixed' by shifting the excluded move a few bits up. Eventually a better hashing scheme seems wise.
Despite these two caveats, I think this is a nice improvement in usability.
Bench: 5346341
Current master can yield different staticEvals depending on the path
used to reach the position. The reason for this is that the evaluation after a
null move is always computed subtracting 2 * Eval::Tempo, while this is not
the case for lazy or specialized evals. This patch always adds tempo to evals,
which doesn't affect playing strength:
LTC
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 59911 W: 7616 L: 7545 D: 44750
STC
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 104947 W: 18897 L: 18919 D: 67131
Fixes issue #1335
Bench: 5208264
Simplify the other check penalty computation. Compared to current master,
a) it uses a 143 kingDanger penalty instead of S(10, 10) for the "otherCheck"
(credits to ElbertoOne for finding a suitable kingDanger range to replace the score
and to Guardian for showing this could also be a neutral change at LTC).
This makes our king safety model more consistent and simpler.
b) it might also score more than one "otherCheck" penalty for a given piece type instead of just one
c) it might score many pinned penalties instead of just one.
d) It also remove 3 conditionals and uses simpler expressions.
So it was tested as a SPRT[-3, 1]
Passed STC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a2b560b0ebc590ccbb8ba6b
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 11705 W: 2217 L: 2080 D: 7408
And LTC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a2bfd0d0ebc590ccbb8bab0
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 26812 W: 3575 L: 3463 D: 19774
Trying to improve on b) another attempt was made to score also the
"otherchecks" for piece types which had some safe checks, but this
failed STC http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a2c79e60ebc590ccbb8badd
bench: 5149133
* A better contempt implementation for Stockfish
The round 2 of TCEC season 10 demonstrated the benefit of having a nice contempt implementation: it gives the strongest programs in the tournament the ability to slow down the game when they feel the position is slightly worse, prefering to stay in a complicated (even if slightly risky) middle game rather than simplifying by force into a drawn endgame.
The current contempt implementation of Stockfish is inadequate, and this patch is an attempt to provide a better one.
Passed STC non-regression test against master:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 83360 W: 15089 L: 15075 D: 53196
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a1bf2de0ebc590ccbb8b370
This contempt implementation is showing promising results in certains situations. For instance, it obtained a nice +30 Elo gain when playing with contempt=40 against Stockfish 7, compared to current master:
• master against SF 7 (20000 games at LTC): +121.2 Elo
• this patch with contempt=40 (20000 games at LTC): +154.11 Elo
This was the result of real cooperative work from the Stockfish team, with key ideas coming from Stefan Geschwentner (locutus2) and Chris Cain (ceebo) while most of the community helped with feedback and computer time.
In this commit the bench is unchanged by default, but you can test at home with the new contempt in the UCI options. The style of play will change a lot when using contempt different of zero (I repeat: not done in this version by default, however)!
The Stockfish team is still deliberating over the best default contempt value in self-play and the best contempt modeling strategy, to help users choosing a contempt value when playing against much weaker programs. These informations will be given in future commits when available :-)
Bench: 5051254
* Remove the prefetch
No functional change.
Currently the NORTH/WEST/SOUTH/EAST values are of type Square, but conceptually they are not squares but directions. This patch separates these values into a Direction enum and overloads addition and subtraction to allow adding a Square to a Direction (to get a new Square).
I have also slightly trimmed the possible overloadings to improve type safety. For example, it would normally not make sense to add a Color to a Color or a Piece to a Piece, or to multiply or divide them by an integer. It would also normally not make sense to add a Square to a Square.
This is a non-functional change.
Add the -fno-exceptions flag to the Makefile to avoid the unecessary exceptions support in the executable (we do not use any exception in Stockfish at the moment).
This change gives a 9.2% reduction in size for the executable binary.
Before : executable size = 376956 bytes
After: executable size = 347652 bytes
No functional change.
Four very minor edits. Note that tte->save() uses posKey and
not pos.key() in other places.
Originally I also added a futility_move_counts() function to
make things more consistent with the futility_margin() and
reduction() functions. But then razor_margin[] should probably
also be turned into a function, etc. Maybe a good idea, maybe not.
So I did not include it.
Non functional change.
The new "weak" expression helps simplify the safe check calculations for rooks or minors, (but the end result for all the safe checks is the exactly the same as in current master)
The only functional change is for the "outer king ring" (for example, squares f3 g3 h3 when white king is on g1). In current master, there was a 191 penalty if any of these was not defended at all.
With this pr, there is this 191 penalty if any of these is not defended at all or is only defended by a white queen.
Tested as a simplification
STC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/59fb03d80ebc590ccbb89fee
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 66167 W: 12015 L: 11971 D: 42181
(against master (Update Copyright year inMakefile))
LTC
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a0106ae0ebc590ccbb8a55f
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 15790 W: 2095 L: 1968 D: 11727
(against master (Handle BxN trade as good capture when history scor))
same as #1296 but rebased on latest master
bench: 5109559
In terms of technical changes this patch eliminates the return
statements from the main loop of pos.see_ge() and replaces two conditional
computations with a single bitwise negation.
No functional change
Stockfish currently relies on the "filter_root_moves" function also
having the side effect of clamping Cardinality against MaxCardinality
(the actual piece count in the tablebases). So if we skip this function,
we will end up probing in the search even without tablebases installed.
We cannot bail out of this function before this check is done, so move
the MultiPV hack a few lines below.
If the PV leads to a draw (3-fold / 50-moves) position
and we're ahead of time, think a little longer, possibly
finding a better way.
As this is most likely effective at higher draw rates,
tried speculative LTC after a yellow STC:
STC:
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/59eb173a0ebc590ccbb8975d
LLR: -2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 56095 W: 10013 L: 9902 D: 36180
elo = 0.688 +- 1.711 LOS: 78.425%
LTC:
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/59eba1670ebc590ccbb897b4
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 59579 W: 7577 L: 7273 D: 44729
elo = 1.773 +- 1.391 LOS: 99.381%
bench: 5234652
In x/y time controls there was a theoretical possibility
to use all available time few moves before the clock will
be updated with new time. This patch fixes that issue.
Tested at 60/15 time control:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 113963 W: 20008 L: 20042 D: 73913
The test was done without adjudication rules!
Bench 5234652
A band-aid patch to workaround current TB code
limitations with multi PV.
Hopefully this will be removed after committing the
big update of TB impementation, now under discussion.
No functional change.
mstembera