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Subject: Re: Importance of TBs once more!

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:31:00 10/13/98

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On October 13, 1998 at 04:34:00, Amir Ban wrote:

>On October 13, 1998 at 02:12:24, Jouni Uski wrote:
>
>>In SSDF game archive there is 5834 games. In 21 games there is KQ-KR ending.
>>And 20 of these were won by Q side WITHOUT any use of TBs! Quite surprising -
>>isn't this normally considered as difficult ending?
>
>I've never seen this ending in a computer-computer game where the side with the
>queen failed to win, at any time control.
>
>This endgame is quite easy for a computer.
>
>Amir

I have seen it several times.  Most recently against CSTal on ICC, where
CSTal had the Q, and couldn't win.  I also saw the same ending against
Rebel 8 a year ago, and again it was drawn.

It might be easy against an opponent with no tablebases, but when the
opponent has perfect info, it is non-trivial.  Again, I'd be happy to run
the experiment with someone to test whether a program can beat a tablebase
in 50 moves or not.  So far, I haven't personally seen one that can.  I
have such endings with three different programs, CSTal, Rebel 8 and gnuchessX
and when Crafty had the R side, all were were draws, when it had the Q side
it won every time because it did use the databases...

Easy test is to take a worst-case position and see if a program can force
mate against a perfect opponent within 50 moves.  I'd bet not, but it would
be interesting to see...



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