[gnugo-devel] endgame move valuation patch

[Evan Berggren Daniel]

Inge and I discussed on nngs a patch to make GNU Go always invoke the
endgame move generator, instead of only when move values are small, in an
attempt to improve move ordering.  We were hopeful that this would provide
an increase in strength at a slight cost to speed, but it appears the
engine gets weaker, if anything.  I ran a 20 game series, even games, with
the patched version taking white.  Black won, 14 to 6.  I then ran 5 games
using matcher_check --stable to find the differences in detail.  I have
created tests based on these differences for the first two games.  Of the
10 tests, each version passes 5 of them.  The speed penalty for turning on
endgame move valuation all the time appears to be ~ 10%, but that isn't
very accurate.

All the relevant files are available at
http://evand.rh.ncsu.edu/~evand/gnugo/endgame/
for those that are interested.


Evan Daniel