Author: Dirk Frickenschmidt
Date: 10:25:20 10/17/98
Years ago I wondered why only very few of the dedicated computers were able to play a so-called minority attack: this is a combined pawns and pieces attack against the so-called Karlsbad pawn structure a7b7c6d5, most commonly known from the Queen's Gambit Declined, exchange variation (examples of the below), but also occuring elsewhere. It often is a useful attacking weapon to push the white b-pawn to b5 to threaten to give black a hanging pawn on c6 and play on this and the black squares (c5 etc) and the b-file (possibly 6th/7th row)afterwards. When after a long time I now checked two fundamental test positions, still within the opening, with some newer programs (on MMX200 at tournament time), I was surprised to see that not much seems to have changed: many of the programs still play nonsense moves like Rac1 or even Rfc1 to get an half-open c-file, which is of no big use for them. My question is, which of the newer programs are able to play minority attacks, without getting the usual moves from their opening books (so you will have to turn opening books of in my test positions)? Here are the two positions: Position 1 [D36] (Instructive sample game: Ftacnik-Ivanchuk, Moscow 1994, with a draw but quite interesting possible variations on both sides) 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 c6 6.Qc2 Be7 7.e3 Nbd7 8.Bd3 0-0 9.Nf3 Re8 10.0-0 Nf8, and which program will play a) 11.Rab1 and after g6 b) 12.b4 by itself? Position 2 [D36] (Instructive sample game: Smyslow-Keres, WCh18 1948) 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 c6 5.e3 Nbd7 6.cxd5 exd5 7.Bd3 Be7 8.Nf3 0-0 9.Qc2 Re8 10.0-0 Nf8 Again, which program plays a) 11.Rab1 and after Ng6 b) 12.b4 by itself? Regards from Dirk
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