Author: Stuart Cracraft
Date: 14:34:22 05/29/98
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On May 28, 1998 at 18:42:10, Roberto Waldteufel wrote: > >My chess program currently has only a crude understanding of king >safety, but I would like to try to improve this. It is quite good at >finding a forced mate, especially if all of the moves by the mating side >are checks, but seems to lack the skill to build up sufficiently >aggressive positions to make full use of this ability. I know that most >programs measure king safety in some more or less complex way, but I am >not sure what is the best thing to measure in terms of information >usefulness per time spent. Maybe a very complex king safety function >with a hash table to cut down the overhead is the way to go, or pehaps a >fairly crude but fast scheme without hashing might be efective. At >present my program uses a count of attackers and defenders to guage king >safety, where I define (somewhat inaccurately) an attacker/defender to >be any piece or pawn that attacks a square adjacent to the king. Does >anyone have any better suggestions as to how to build into the >evaluation function the tendancy to move its pieces to the most >aggressive squares possible? > >Roberto Besides open lines near the king, "swiss-cheese" pawn structure, and enemy pieces nearby, I'd suggest simply square-control. Weight the squares nearest a) the center of the board b) the enemy's half of the board and c) the enemy king location in the order c>b>a. Then each attack of each side's pieces on all the squares it attacks is summed based on the square's control value. Combine 'em all up and subtrace white from black or enemy from friendly and add it to the total score for the position. This kind of thing, though slower, is far better than simple piece placement/location since that does not take into account mobility, only location. And square-control takes into account centrality, attack, and mobility all in one. --Stuart
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