Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Tough position for Crafty (?)

Author: Pete R.

Date: 13:57:32 06/07/00

Go up one level in this thread


On June 07, 2000 at 12:01:33, Pete R. wrote:

>On June 07, 2000 at 01:51:18, Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>>On June 06, 2000 at 19:19:19, Pete R. wrote:
>>>On June 06, 2000 at 16:00:17, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>>>I think this is a good example to show that "best moves" in EPD test positions
>>>>are only "best moves" for a certain depth unless a checkmate is found.
>>>
>>>I wouldn't go quite that far.  For example, after 1. e4 dxe4 in this position,
>>>black is completely lost (assuming best play by white of course
>>
>>See Bernard B.'s post...  Crafty seems to have found a loophole in 1. e4 dxe4
>>...
>>;-)
>
>I assume you mean this:
>
>16   356:58  -0.15   1. e4 dxe4 2. g4 Bc8 3. Qxf7+ Kxh6
>                                    4. Rh3+ Bh4 5. Rxh4+ Qxh4 6. Qxe8 Kg7
>                                    7. Qe5+ Kf8 8. Qf4+ Kg8 9. Bxe4 Rb8
>                                    10. Bd5+
>
>Crafty is simply not doing well here (I tried 16.15 and 17.10). The winning line
>is 2...Bc8 3. Qxf7+ Kxh6 4. Rh3+ Bh4 5. Qh5+ Kg7 6. Rxh4 Qf6
>     7. Qxe8 Qxh4 8. Re1 +-.
>
>From Bc8, it doesn't see 5. Qh5+ is best.  As you go down the winning PV it does
>choose Qh5+, but then from there it doesn't see 7. Qxe8.  In fact if you feed it
>the position at 6...Qf6, at 12 ply is still chooses Qh7+ with an eval of 0.52.
>Then you feed it 7. Qxe8 and of course the capture Qxh4 is forced, and then it
>quickly sees that Re1 wins for white.  But missing Qxe8 from the immediately
>preceeding position is very strange because it takes less than 12 ply to see
>that white wins once you give it the move.

Not to pick on Crafty, other programs seem to exhibit a similar effect, not
finding Qxe8, even though they have searched more ply than is required for them
to see that it wins once you provide it.  I don't understand this sort of thing.
 In any case it takes a 12 ply search from 6...Qf6 to select Qxe8, so it would
take an extremely deep search to find this win from move 2.  It seems that once
you get to a certain depth, it takes so many hours to get to the next ply that
it's just a waste.  Much better would be to invoke some sort of "correspondence"
analysis mode where you select candidate moves at each ply and then sequentially
investigate the variations as a human would. This sort of meta-searching has
been discussed before, I suppose it's easier said than done.  But at least for
doing very deep searching that type of mode might be superior.



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.