Author: Tord Romstad
Date: 13:53:20 06/05/04
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On June 05, 2004 at 15:26:53, Anthony Cozzie wrote: >We need to get Nalimov to write some W/L/D tables. I am not sure I agree. Implementing simple high-level rules for evaluating endgames like KRPKR correctly is a difficult, but very valuable excercise. The reason is that you will sometimes discover principles which are also useful in more complicated endgames, but which are much more easily noticed when there are just a few piece left. If you rely too heavily on bitbases and tablebases in the early phases of development, you lose the chance to make such discoveries. This applies to human chess players as well as computers. I spent a lot of time studying the KRPKR endgame when I was young. I cannot remember a single tournament game I played in which this endgame appeared on the board, but the heuristic knowledge learned by studying this endgame helped me save a lot of half points in rook endgames with numerous pawns. Studying basic endgames gives you a unique chance to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the individual pieces and how they interact. My experience as a tournament player was that knowledge of basic endgames decided a much bigger fraction of the games than concrete opening knowledge. This is one of the reasons I find it hard to understand the FRC enthusiasts. In the endgame, of course, FRC and classical chess are identical. If you want to reduce the importance of preparation and knowledge in chess, you should invent a variant where the endgame is radically different, not a variant where the opening setup is random. >Preferably in C rather than >C++, considering that 2/3 of all instructions in Zappa are from tbindex.cpp :) Here, however, I agree 100%. :-) Tord
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