Author: Francis Monkman
Date: 17:02:43 05/01/99
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On May 01, 1999 at 19:44:01, Michael de la Maza wrote: >I was playing white against my portable Novag Opal and arrived at this position: > >White: Qa7, Re1, Kg1, and pawns on h2, g2, f2, and e3 >Black: Qb5, Nc4, Rd3, Kg8, and pawns on e4, f5, g5, and h7 >White to move > >This is clearly a won game for black, but to my amazement I was a able to draw >by three-fold repetition (1. Qe7 h6 2. Qe6+ Kg7 3. Qe7+ Kg6 4. Qe6+ Kg7 etc.) > >I figured that Opal was just such a weak computer that it didn't see the many >black moves that preserve the win and instead settled for a draw because it >didn't want to lose a pawn or two. > >So I checked with ChessLab (www.chesslab.com) and, amazingly, the best variation >that it gives is actually a win for WHITE! Here it is: >1. Qe7 h6 >2. Qe6+ Kg7 >3. Qe7+ Kg6 >4. Qe6+ Kh5 >5. Qf7+ Kh4 >6. g3+ Kg4 >7. h3+ Kf3 >8. Qh5+ g4 >9. hxg4 >and mate in two for WHITE > >Two things stand out about this line: 1) There are several ways for black to win >but neither program found any good line for black and 2) The variation that >leads to mate for white seems so trivial that any program should be able to >avoid it. > >I'm curious to know how easy other programs find this position. > > >The settings for the two programs were as follows: >Novag Opal: "Average of 120 seconds per move" >Chesslab: "Long Analysis" > >Michael Genius4 (P Pro200) finds the following line, almost immediately: 1 Qe7 Qe5 2 Qxe5 Nxe5 3 Rb1 Kf7 4 g3 h5 5 Rb7+ Ke6 6 Rb6+ Rd6 7 Rxd6+ Kxd6 8 Kg2 Nf3 Which makes a pretty picture! FM
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