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Subject: Re: Crafty and pawn structure eval

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:10:21 05/17/00

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On May 17, 2000 at 05:56:36, Oliver Roese wrote:

>On May 16, 2000 at 09:54:24, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On May 15, 2000 at 23:24:13, blass uri wrote:
>>
>>>On May 15, 2000 at 22:43:00, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 14, 2000 at 18:09:20, Pete R. wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On May 14, 2000 at 08:54:35, Jürgen Hartmann wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On May 14, 2000 at 08:44:57, Jürgen Hartmann wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>and ...b5 is a possibility for counter play. Frans Morsch will certainly sweat
>>>>>>>blood and tears at the moment. Small consolation that all other chess programs
>>>>>>>behave in the same way.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Correction: Crafty 17.10/CB plays 13... exf4!, the only chance to avoid the
>>>>>>death sentence.
>>>>>
>>>>>Well, according to comments from Dr. Hyatt, pawn structure evaluation seems to
>>>>>be his major tuning focus for Crafty these days.  Clearly this is a worthwhile
>>>>>goal, since computers are already top notch at tactics.  But the consequences of
>>>>>pawn moves are often far too deep for tactical evaluation, so things like this
>>>>>have to be caught in the positional evaluation.  A program *should* be able to
>>>>>"see", just as a human can, that white has a great pawn structure and will
>>>>>continue to annex space if f5 is allowed.  Not easy to program I suppose.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Not easy...  not impossible...
>>>>
>>>>Very important against these guys...  In this case you simply can't allow
>>>>the e4-f5 pawn chain to happen.  The center becomes locked, white has all
>>>>the space on the kingside, and black is constrained to live in a small shoe-
>>>>box and wait for jack-the-ripper to show up...
>>>
>>>It will be interesting if there is some statistics about the results in the same
>>>pawn structure after f5.
>>>
>>>In how many games the same pawn structure happened and how many games out of it
>>>white won.
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>
>>Take a wild guess about how many times this happened to Crafty before I tuned
>>the eval to not allow a pawn chain like d3/e4/f5.
>>
>>:)
>>
>>I don't have _all_ the answers to such positions, by any stretch.  And crafty
>>will react violently to such attempts, sometimes so violently that it ends up
>>with a weak position (but at least it doesn't get crushed after allowing f5).
>>
>>It is a very fine line to walk.  I still have a lot of work to prevent this
>>sort of stuff, even though I have worked on king safety repeatedly.  It has a
>>very good idea about open lines around the king, and not allowing them.  But it
>>does, on occasion, defend against a threat that is not serious enough to cause
>>concern.  And in chess, everything is 'give and take'.  If you give more than
>>you take, you can get into just as much trouble as when you allow f5 to be
>>played...
>
>Interesting...
>Recently i played a lot of games against Fritz 4.01 (100+, i got roughly 20%,
>each having 15 m/g). A main avenue to success (amongst some others) was to build
>up such a pawn structure. Computers are very bad in such positions and Fritz is
>even worse, since he has absolutely no clue there.
>(But beware!
>Against most humans it is enough to have a strong attack and they will loose
>their fate rather soon. Not so against computers. If you sacrifice, every move
>must be correct otherwise you loose. I lost many games in this manner. )
>But against crafty i couldnt manage to get into that...
>I think this is very important for good performance in a competitive
>environment.
>Practically a closed position is more worthy than an extra pawn in an opened
>position against Fritz under some circumstances. (I mean it.)
>
>Oliver Roese


I agree.  So do many IM/GM players on ICC.  :)




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