Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 12:12:25 08/13/00
Go up one level in this thread
On August 13, 2000 at 11:42:57, Mike S. wrote:
>On August 13, 2000 at 10:59:22, pete wrote:
>
>>(...)
>>[D]3r1rk1/2p1Rppp/p4n2/1p1b4/3P4/3B3P/PPPN2P1/4R1K1 b - - 0 1
>
>It seems to me that Tiger, when playing 21...Bxa2?, cannot have expected 22.b3.
>Maybe he expected something like 22.Rxc7 Rxd4 23.Ra1 Bd5 24.Rxa6 or similar. I
>would be interested if Tiger "knows" this standard motif of locking up a bishop
>after it captured a border pawn on the 2nd (7th) row. I think, in such cases the
>lines beginnig with b3 etc. should be examined more closely than usual (?).
>
>Regards,
>M.Scheidl
Chess Tiger 12.0e has a partial knowledge of this "standard motif". It knows
that the bishop is in trouble if it cannot leave a2, but the evaluation penalty
I give in this case does not prevent it to take the pawn.
That means that if another move could lead to a positional advantage, Tiger
would play the other move. If there is no such move, Tiger will take the pawn
with the bishop.
I know it sounds a little bit strange, but I have been thinking about this
problem for quite a while, and I have not found a good solution. For every
example of a trapped bishop that gets lost I have seen the opposite example
where the trapped bishop eventually escapes or completely shreds the side it has
been trapped in, which leads to a big pawn majority and a winning endgame.
I know Ed has the opposite opinion, and I guess that Rebel, in this position,
would never take the pawn. Apparently the chess programming community is divided
on this issue. It is said that Fritz, Tiger and Junior (and Genius also I think)
would take pawn, while Rebel would not (maybe Hiarcs would not take it either,
I'm not sure).
However I agree that I don't like the trapped bishop on a2 and, as the case is
shown more and more often on CCC (Uri already told me about this case some time
ago), I might eventually tell Tiger to avoid it.
My guess is that it is not worth a single elo point, but it would certainly lead
to more elegant moves, from a human point of view. So it's not worthless.
Christophe
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