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Subject: Re: Never Say "Impossible"

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:34:58 05/18/01

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On May 18, 2001 at 18:03:59, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:

>
>however, these positions are legal.
>[D]rnbqkbRr/p1p1pp1p/1p1p2p1/8/1PPP1PP1/P3P3/8/RNB1KBN1 w Qkq - 0 1
>[D]8/8/8/8/3k4/2p1p3/2P1P3/3bK3 w - - 0 1

Promotions simply add another dimension of difficulty...  As I said a couple
of times, this is a hard problem.



>
>Right. I should have said "First, eliminate all obviously illegal positions". I
>think you could catch nearly all of them with six cases:
>1. illegal combination of material, e.g. 5 queens and 5 pawns.
>2. illegal pawn structure, e.g. 6 white pawns on the a file, and black has more
>than a king.
>3. bishop blocked by 2 pawns on 2nd or 3 pawns on 7th rank, either original or
>current position.
>4. rook on other side of pawn wall, pawns on all files, none advanced more than
>one square and side with rook has all its pawns.
>5. king behind opposing pawn wall, with no possible path without being in check
>(this seems the most difficult).
>6. both kings in check.
>
>A first try would be to check for 1,2,3 and 6 and put all positions with pawns
>on all files, none advanced more than one square, and all positions where there
>are no paths from the kings' current positions to their inital positions that
>are not attacked by enemy pawns into "not sure".
>
>Another test might to be to "unmove" each piece to its initial position,
>"unmoving" opposing pieces only as necessary.



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