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Subject: Re: Interesting Endgame Question

Author: blass uri

Date: 04:41:11 08/05/00

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On August 05, 2000 at 05:32:16, Colin Frayn wrote:

>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.

programs have many positions that they do not understand.
Junior5 was also happy to play Nd4+ against Crafty17.11 and drew the game after
Rxd4 f1Q.

Here is the relevant position

[D]8/5p2/2K4p/1P6/8/1n6/5pk1/3R4 b - - 0 1

I do not know if Nd4+ was the drawing mistake(crafty expected Na5+) or if the
drawing mistake was later.

I think it may be a good idea to reduce the value of the queen in the endgames.

Uri



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