Author: Djordje Vidanovic
Date: 06:40:32 04/01/00
Go up one level in this thread
On April 01, 2000 at 08:18:51, Frederic Friedel wrote: >Amazingly it never occurred to anyone -- Thompson, Stiller, Nalimov -- to run >through the ending K+N+N vs K. Everyone assumed it was simply a draw in every >case. Well, fire up your Nalimov tablebase generator and prepare for a shock! In >over 10% of all legal positions the attacking side can forced a mate in 31 to 48 >moves. It is difficult to do anything systematically with the tablebase after it >has been generated (except play against them), but as far as I can tell the >attacking side can force a win if the defending king is on one of the squares >a1, b1 or a2 and the attacking king and at least one knight is within the square >a1-d1-d4-a4. Naturally this can be reflected in all four corners of the board. >Some of the mates are wonderfully intricate and involve forcing the king to >move to a4 (or d1) and back again to a1. John Nunn is studying the ending and >will provide a better statistical evaluation soon. Frederic, much ado about nothing. You can find the mentioned ending thoroughly analysed in the Edwards bases that you failed to mention. After your flawed, though provoking, reminder I revisited the Edwards bases and, lo and behold!, I lost each and every position facing the two intrepid Knights in the KNN - K ending. My King was thrown to his knees each time but the Aleph mate I found to be the most humiliating of all (for those who are not in the know, the Aleph mate is when you get mated on square a1). *** Djordje
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.