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Subject: Re: It is a design decision and not a bug.

Author: allan johnson

Date: 00:15:25 03/19/01

Go up one level in this thread


On March 17, 2001 at 22:55:14, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On March 17, 2001 at 14:48:05, Chris Hull wrote:
>
>>On March 17, 2001 at 13:38:31, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>On March 17, 2001 at 13:04:29, Antonio Senatore wrote:
>>>
>>>>It seems incredible that a top chess program like Junior 6 (without the KPPKB
>>>>tablebase but with the KBK and the KBKP tables) CAN'T SEE MATE IN ONE in the
>>>>next position:
>>>>
>>>>[D]7k/4pK1p/7B/8/8/8/8/8 w - -
>>>
>>>It is not a bug
>>>It is a design decision by the programmer.
>>
>>
>>A bad design decision is even worse than a bug. A bad design is
>>almost always much harder to correct than a bug in the program.
>
>If you count the number of games this "bug" loses, vs the number of
>games it wins by letting the program avoid trading into an ending that
>is drawn 99.99999999% of the time, you might decide that this isn't a
>"bug" at all.  It is a very reasonable way to handle a well-known problem.
>
>
>>
>>
>>>Junior knows that king bishop with not more material cannot mate and the same
>>>for king knight with no more material.
>>>
>>>It practically help Junior in games because Junior simply does not have to
>>>search in KB vs KPP positions unless it evaluates the position as advantage for
>>>the side with the pawns.
>>>
>>>I believe that you can change the default parameters if you prefer a weaker
>>>program that can see the mates in the position that you posted.
>>>
>>>Experience tells that they never or almost never happen in games so the
>>>programmer(Amir Ban) did not care about them.
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>Chris



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