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Subject: Re: How to beat Rebel 9 in 16 moves!!

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 17:11:27 11/09/97

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On November 09, 1997 at 18:00:30, Ed Schröder wrote:

>>Posted by Robert Sherman on November 09, 1997 at 12:37:35:
>
>>This post is not meant to demean Rebel 9 in any way.  Rebel 9 is, in my
>>opinion, a very strong program with many nice features that makes it a
>>significant upgrade over Rebel 8.  Although Rebel 8 and Rebel 9 are very
>> strong, I have uncovered a glitch in respect to the amount of time the
>>programs spend on taking the piece on certain sacrifices.  The following
>>game was played on a "obsolete Pentium 100", so it may not be applicable
>> to the faster machines.  I did send this game to Ed Schroder when he
>>was producing Rebel 9.  On a fixed level Rebel 9, does see the impending
>>mate 15 seconds later then it does when playing at a 40/2 tournament
>>level.  This may mean that Mr. Schroder was testing Rebel 9 on faster
>>machines and didn't believe that the need to make changes to the way
>>Rebel 9 allocates time would make any sense.  My belief is that when a
>>sacrifice is played, the program should realize that move is very
>>critical for the game and spend a long time analyzing whether the sac is
>>sound or not.  Anyway, on the fixed time level, Rebel 9 finds a
>>refutation the second fastest of programs I have tested, second only to
>>Genius.  Also, shareware programs never reject taking the knight bait
>>while taking deep searches.  While all commercial programs find the
>>looming mate (except Rebel because of the timing glitch) and make the
>>appropriate move.  So this game seems to separate the "men from the
>>boys."  I have not tested this game on Crafty or some commercial
>>programs (Hiarcs 6, CSTal, Shredder), so I would be interested to see
>>how they do. Without further ado, here is the game: (Sorry I didn't have
>>time to put it in PGN)
>
>I am aware of this for years. Rebel is programmed for fast recaptures.
>This algorithm of course has some negative side effects shown in the
>below game which fortunately are big exceptions.
>
>Still I prefer to leave it the way it is now because removing the
>algorithm would mean Rebel will think 3-5 minutes again on simple
>recaptures. I received too many complaints about that in the past.
>
>Thus so now and then you are lucky :)
>
>- Ed Schroder -
>
>

there's two solutions here:  1.  reply quickly *only* on recaptures,
rather
than on any capture that seems to be better than any of the other moves
by
a significant amount.  I do this.

2.  Don't play O-O into that attack in the first place.  Crafty
concluded
that O-O was totally busted, after a minute on a P5, more like 30
seconds on
the P6/200...  That's a difficult problem however, when you have to
choose:

(a) castle short *now*.  (b) castle long, but it takes a few moves to
prepare;  and (c) don't castle period.  I've spent a good bit of time
trying
to make this work, which turns out pretty well most of the time...



>
>>White : Robert Sherman   Black: Rebel 9
>
>>1. e4  e5   2. Nf3  Nc6   3. Bc4  Bc5   4. Nc3  Nc6  5. Nd5  Nxe4  6. d3
>> Nxf2  7. Qe2  Nxh1  8. Ng5  O-O   9. Nxc7  Qxc7  10. Qh5  h6  11. Bxf7
>>Kh8  12. Qg6  Qa5  13. c3  Qxc3  14. bc  Bf2  15. Kd1  Ne7  16. Qh7#



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