Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 15:38:35 02/19/01
Go up one level in this thread
On February 19, 2001 at 18:17:58, Christophe Theron wrote: >On February 19, 2001 at 11:34:22, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On February 19, 2001 at 11:17:52, Chuck wrote: >> >>>On February 19, 2001 at 11:12:37, Christophe Theron wrote: >>> >>>>On February 19, 2001 at 07:44:30, John Wentworth wrote: >>>> >>>>>This is just an observance and may be completely wrong, but it seems that when a >>>>>program castles Queen side his chances of losing go up by a lot. Every time I >>>>>see a program do this, I say to myself he's going to lose and I bet more than >>>>>60% of the time he does. This may be a problem with humans vs humans as well, I >>>>>don't know. Anyone else notice this? >>>> >>>> >>>>I think you are right. >>>> >>>> >>>> Christophe >>> >>>I wonder if this a problem with queen-side castling or castling opposite (one >>>side castled short, one castled long)? >>> >>>Chuck >> >> >>It is a problem of the following: >> >>1. not recognizing king safety and the danger of a pawn storm until it is >>too late; > > >That's right. Human players are able to see very quickly that the position of >the king is unsafe, even if the pawn shelter is perfectly fine and there are no >open lines directed to the king. They know (by exerience) that the position of >the king is going to get really bad later. > > > >>2. not knowing how to attack the opponent, because when you castle to opposite >>sides, it becomes a race to see who draws the first blood. If you don't know >>how to break the position open (and I have not seen any programs do this very >>well) then while the program fiddles, Rome burns. > > >That's right, but on the other hand many programs already know that in case of >opposite castle it is important to start a pawn storm immediately. > >On the other hand many program are really good at launching a pawn storm that >end up in a blocked pawn position in front of the opponent's castle, which >actually protects the opponent's king from ANY attack. Really funny, and I would >not bet my own program is able to avoid this problem. > > > >>3. castling opposite is a direct challenge. Quite often the human will have >>his pieces positioned to support his attack, while the program's pieces are >>positions improperly to attack or defend. The time lost repositioning them >>leads to trouble. > > >Yes, absolutely. > > > > Christophe A good test is a position where white plays h6, black refuses to play g6 to create the hole at g6 for a white queen (mate), and then white plays hxg7 and is quite happy. While he just put a solid wall of granite up on the g-file since white can't capture his own pawn and black won't do it until the time is right. The problem I see is that some programs have huge scores for open files on the king. Even if the opponent can plant a bishop on that file and close it for as long as he wants. There are open files, and there are useful open files.
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