Panic mode?

[Dann Corbit]

Sometimes, when playing a game of chess, you suddenly realize the opponent's plan and it looks bad for you. So you take a big hunk of time trying to find an escape route.

Now, there are "Win Finder" modes with Rybka and other programs. It is obvious what they are doing ... They set the window to 1/2 pawn above the current best move mark and do a zero window search.

I wonder if such a thing would be good for a game playing state. In other words -- your engine is chugging along happy as a clam with an eval of +0.7 pawns and suddenly the bottom falls out and we have an eval of -1.26 pawns. In such a case, during game play, I wonder if a switch to Win Finder mode would be a good idea.

[bob]

Sometimes, when playing a game of chess, you suddenly realize the opponent's plan and it looks bad for you. So you take a big hunk of time trying to find an escape route.

Now, there are "Win Finder" modes with Rybka and other programs. It is obvious what they are doing ... They set the window to 1/2 pawn above the current best move mark and do a zero window search.

I wonder if such a thing would be good for a game playing state. In other words -- your engine is chugging along happy as a clam with an eval of +0.7 pawns and suddenly the bottom falls out and we have an eval of -1.26 pawns. In such a case, during game play, I wonder if a switch to Win Finder mode would be a good idea.

The problem is that window. If you fail low, what do you set it to? If you set it too high, you fail low again, and all you did was burn more time. Looking for a win is OK if you don't mind it when you don't find one. But in a real game, not finding a move is not an option.