Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Difficult endgame test position (but solvable for humans!)

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 17:12:54 06/09/00

Go up one level in this thread


On June 09, 2000 at 19:33:08, Robin Smith wrote:

>This game and position reminds me very much of one I just finished in the US
>correspondence chess championship.  In the following position:
>
>[D]8/4kpp1/1pQ4p/p7/P2q4/3P2P1/2P2P1P/6K1 b
>
>black played 34. ... Qd6? and lost after 35.Qxd6+ Kxd6 36.Kf1 b5 37.Ke2 bxa4
>38.Kd2 and white easily stops the a pawn and wins.  After the game I was
>surprised to find that even after very long "thinks" programs seem to
>want to avoid playing 35.Qxd6, even though it is not at all hard (for a human)to
>see that white can stop the a-pawns, and after that white's connected c & d
>pawns are unstopable.  The only exception I found was Fritz6a, which finds Qxd6
>fairly quickly.
>
>Maybe this position would make a good test position?
>
>Robin Smith

I think the position is too hard to really test anything.  I bet that programs
want to play c4 right away as white in order to stop from "losing" the a-pawn.

A good to test might be where white chooses to "lose" the pawn.

bruce




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.