Unordered moves phenomenon

[Cardoso]

You are right, the FH positions I dumped are positions in wich another move easily FH, but why do this happens so often? I mean in all positions that FH why most of them are positions where several other moves FH?

Since you are not doing any move ordering at all, it is possible that the moves being tried the first few times are crappy moves. At the next ply there will be a lot of moves to counter those crappy moves even if they are also random.

What is the order in which you generate moves? Do you generate captures first? Pawn moves?

Sorry Edsel I should have said in the original post my engine is a spanish checkers engine.

[Cardoso]

When I answered to Uri, I had also in mind a topic raised by H.G.M., about the marginal hash move.
http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 91&t=65189

[Evert]

Well, one consideration is that you don't need the "best" move to cut, just a reasonable one. A second consideration is that following a major blunder, there are probably several moves that will cut.
So this may not be so unreasonable (to be sure, 59% cuts on the first move is aweful).

Yes I dumped some positions where the FH happened, as well as the move list.
And the dumped positions are easily failing high positions, so almost any move would fail high.
But now the question is why do these easily failing high positions occur so often?

Most moves are bad (in Chess anyway, I haven't a clue about Spanish Checkers), apparently bad enough that almost any move will counter them. What's difficult is finding the one or two moves that are actually good.