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Subject: Weird position kills Fritz!!

Author: Christoph Fieberg

Date: 00:26:44 08/31/00


Interesting posting from a chess newsgroup. Is Fritz 4.01 indeed so vulnerable?
Who can help Taylor?
Regards,
Christoph

Subject: Weird position kills Fritz!!
From: kingstont@aol.com (Kingston T)
Date: 2000/08/28
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess.misc

Back on 10 August, I read a posting from Christoph Fieberg (fieberg@cologne.de)
announcing that he had composed a position which caused problems for Fritz6.
In Forsythe notation, the position was:

8/8/pppppppK/NBBR1NRp/nbbrqnrP/PPPPPPPk/8/Q7. W

Though the position is absurd, it is legal, and a mate in one for White that
most players would spot in seconds.  Fieberg said that on his machine Fritz6
took over an hour to solve it, and asked "How do other computers react?"

I will tell you how Fritz 4.01 reacted to it on my computers: FRITZ DIED!!  I
set  up this position, clicked "infinite analysis", and Fritz immediately froze
up.  I had to use ctrl-alt-delete to free the machine. After that, Fritz was
crippled!  It could no longer analyze, either in "play" or "infinite analysis"
mode.  It just sits there doing nothing.  Only the opening book, database and
similar non-calculative functions still worked.

Thinking this might have been merely a coincidental catastrophe, I tried the
position on a different machine loaded with the same Fritz 4.01.  Same result:
Fritz kaput.  Furthermore, I have have so far been unable to restore Fritz to
full functionality since then, even after re-installing from the CD.

Therefore I would like to warn other potential victims about the risks of this
experiment, and would like to ask: can any technolgicially savvy reader offer
me some help in getting Fritz 4.01 restored to health? Please respond by
e-mail, serious replies only.

Taylor Kingston



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