My chess engine can generally get a branching factor 4.5 in the opening and around 7.5 during average middlegame positions. However, I recently tested my engine on the test position Kiwipete and found that the branching rate was nearly 12. Is this the case with other engines?
Here's the position again:
[FEN "r3k2r/p1ppqpb1/bn2pnp1/3PN3/1p2P3/2N2Q1p/PPPBBPPP/R3K2R w KQkq - 0 1"]
Several notes: I have quiescence search, which normally accounts for about 65-75% of the searched nodes, but I've found in this specific position it takes around 90% of the total nodes (at depth 6: 251,000 normal nodes and 2,286,000 q nodes). I'm wondering if this thing with the q-search is also normal for an engine with a similar branching rate in normal positions.
Additionally, I do have MVV-LVA for move ordering (but not SEE, please tell me how helpful this actually is). I have null-move pruning, which does help quite a bit, but no other kinds of unsafe pruning. I also do not have a TT.
