🚀 go-pugleaf

> 
> I tried playing gnuchess compiled with and without -DHISTORY on my SPARC 10.
> With time limit 40 moves per 5 minutes it doesn't seem that the one with 
> history heuristics plays any better than the one without.  As a matter of 
> fact the one without history heuristics consistently looks at more nodes 
> per second.  Does the performance cut outweigh the advantage of history 
> heuristics?  Or is it only true with fast time limit?  Thanks in advance.
> 
>                          Johanes Suhardjo (johanes@farida.cc.nd.edu)
> --
> Art is anything you can get away with.
> 		-- Marshall McLuhan.
> 
> 

The purpose of the history heuristics is to improve move ordering.
This means that with -DHISTORY, gnuchess will need to look at a 
smaller tree to arrive at the same move/score (most of the time)
than without -DHISTORY.  Typically you can get 20-40% smaller tree
with history. 

I STRONGLY recommend running with HISTORY always on.  You don't have 
to worry about the node/secs as they are not an indication of how well 
the program is playing. 

-- 
Chua Kong Sian   <kongsian@nsrc.nus.sg>
National Supercomputing Research Centre
Singapore