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Subject: Re: Two interesting snapshots

Author: Ed Schröder

Date: 21:40:06 08/13/00

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On August 13, 2000 at 20:51:38, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On August 13, 2000 at 18:47:42, Alvaro Rodriguez wrote:
>
>>On August 13, 2000 at 18:20:33, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On August 13, 2000 at 16:21:34, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>
>>>>On August 13, 2000 at 15:12:25, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>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.
>>>>
>>>>The question is what happens in cases when you cannot find by a search of few
>>>>minutes that the bishop can escape and cannot find by a search of few minutes
>>>>that the bishop is trapped.
>>>>
>>>>I believe that in most of these cases moves like Bxa2 are wrong but I may be
>>>>wrong because I did not see a lot of examples when search cannot solve the
>>>>problem.
>>>>
>>>>Uri
>>>
>>>
>>>I prefer to be conservative here.  Rather than trying (a) if the bishop isn't
>>>lost, then take the pawn, I prefer (b) if the bishop can't get off of a2 by
>>>the time the evaluation is called, then it is trapped.
>>>
>>>Works well for me, very inexpensive to test for.
>>
>>Crafty takes the pawn if the analysis shows that it can get out? So crafty takes
>>no risk.. Interesting to see what the other program does in this positions..
>>
>>Regards,
>>Alvaro
>
>
>That is correct.  It has to see taking the pawn, _and_ the bishop getting off
>of a2, within the search.  Otherwise it assumes that the bishop is trapped and
>gives it a huge penalty.

How huge is huge?

The penalty Rebel uses is 1.25

Never seen the problem again when I implemented the rule 15 years ago
after losing too many games because of not understanding the danger.

Ed



>I haven't seen it fail very often, and when it did fail, the position was
>complex enough that it wasn't possible to understand it with a simple static
>eval trick anyway.
>
>The amazing thing is that I _still_ see it happening on ICC...  I got tired
>of seeing crafty do that pretty quickly.  I decided that sitting in a game
>and worrying about whether it will play a move that even a 1600 player would
>avoid was simply something I didn't want to do.  As a result, I don't. :)
>
>A 2500 (GM-level) program simply can _not_ play such a move.  If it does, and
>a GM sees it, it will lose the next N games because he will set that trap over
>and over... and the program will bite over and over.




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