Some time back I tried implementing a Principal Variation Search , but as I wrote about in my post PVS – Another Fast Fail , the results were not good. At the time I concluded that if PVS is not a win, it must mean that the cost of the researches is outweighing the nodes saved by doing zero width searches. For that to be the case, it must mean that too often the first move is not the best move, which points to move ordering.

Since then move ordering has certainly improved, as documented in this post on Move Ordering . So, I decided to give PVS another try. In my first attempt, it appeared to be another loss. Then, I decided to not do PVS at the root node, and now it appears to be a very small win.

A win is a win, so I’m merging the changes in, but I think there is more to do here. My suspicion is that, as move ordering improves, the benefits of PVS will increase. The most obvious way to improve move ordering is to add a depth preferred hash table (the current strategy is a very naive “always replace”).

It seems like PVS at the root should work as well, if the program can reliably predict the best move often enough. I know a lot of programs put extra effort into ordering the moves at the root. I remember reading that Bob Hyatt’s Crafty does a quiescence search at the root. So, this is on the backlog as well, and once complete I will revisit the idea of PVS at the root.

For now, it is on to the next thing – Late Move Reductions. I’m hopeful that will yield a significant ELO increase, perhaps finally putting P4 on par with P3.