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Subject: Re: Interesting Endgame Question

Author: blass uri

Date: 03:18:47 08/06/00

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On August 06, 2000 at 05:19:33, Colin Frayn wrote:

>On August 05, 2000 at 06:47:04, Ricardo Gibert 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)
>>
>>On the other hand, there may be another reason why your program should not have
>>played into this line that _is_ fixable. Why not post the position before the
>>sac and see how other programs handle it?
>
>OK I couldn't find the game, but I think this was the position 2 moves before,
>followed by Ra5 Rxa5 c1=Q Ra7.
>
>[D]8/8/8/2R5/7P/6P1/r1pk2K1/8 b - -
>
>It looks almost better to have a lone rook against the 2 pawns, i.e. by playing
>c1=Q Rxc1 Rxc1 or something.  Crafty certainly prefers this.  Of course, I might
>have the position wrong, but it was certainly very similar.  I think, as was
>said, it may be that ColChess values queens too highly in certain endgame
>situations.  However, in general I value a queen as better than 2 rooks in an
>endgame, which I think is justified.
>
>Cheers,
>Col

I think that the 5 piece tablebases can help you.
Unfortunately I have not the KR vs KPP tablebases.

Uri



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