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Subject: Interesting Endgame Question

Author: Colin Frayn

Date: 02:32:16 08/05/00


This position came up in a game I just played between ColChess (Development
version) and Sjeng v7.1.

[D]8/R7/8/8/7P/6P1/3k2K1/2q5 b - -

ColChess, as Black, has to move, having just promoted a pawn to a queen, and
then white played a rook move (Ra5-a7).

This looks like it should be an easy win for black, but in the game ColChess
just moved its pieces around aimlessly and drew by repetition.  This annoyed me
quite a bit so I tried this position at longer time controls and sure enough it
still couldn't see anything.  Then I tried it with Crafty and still nothing.

Is this one of those positions where it's drawn and humans (if they're better
than me) can see it easily but a computer can't?  If so then I'd better fix
ColChess' evaluation function before release so that it doesn't exchange off
(from a stronger position it sac'd its rook to promote the pawn)

I can (kind of) see why it might be drawn, but I'd appreciate input either way
(maybe from those of you with 5-man TBs.)

Cheers,
Colin

P.S. New version of ColChess is nearing completion.  Still unsure whether it is
actually stronger than the previous version but it's slightly faster and has
some funky new features and a lot of code improvements and bugfixes.



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