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Subject: Re: Crafty refuses draw request

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 11:09:38 09/06/00

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On September 06, 2000 at 13:56:42, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On September 06, 2000 at 11:18:53, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On September 06, 2000 at 11:06:16, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On September 06, 2000 at 06:14:29, Amir Ban wrote:
>>>
>>>>On September 05, 2000 at 10:32:27, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On September 05, 2000 at 01:18:55, Mark Longridge wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>I was playing crafty the other day and white had a pawn on h7, and a knight on
>>>>>>g5, black's king is in the corner, and black has only it's king.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>There's absolutely no way black can win with just a king, but it STILL REFUSES
>>>>>>A DRAW request!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>It just seemed very odd ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>It mainly depends on how you have things set up.  And even if it is set up
>>>>>correctly, there are 'rules' that have to be satisfied before it will accept
>>>>>a draw.  IE it has to believe it is a draw.  It also has to get a draw score
>>>>>back from the search for 5 consecutive moves (3 for GM players) before it will
>>>>>accept or offer a draw.
>>>>>
>>>>>Just giving the position doesn't provide enough information...
>>>>>
>>>>>The log.nnn file is also needed.
>>>>
>>>>The position provides all the relevant information.
>>>>
>>>>It's your problem, not the opponent's to make sure your program behaves
>>>>reasonably.
>>>>
>>>>Asking the opponent to provide internal crafty parameters and logs is not
>>>>reasonable.
>>>>
>>>>Amir
>>>
>>>
>>>Your assumptions are wrong.  The default setup _will_ offer draws.  But it is
>>>possible that the user has disabled this and not remembered.  The position
>>>doesn't say a thing, because of the rules I gave.  Crafty has to find a draw
>>>score 5 moves in a row to offer a draw.  The current search eval has to be
>>><= drawscore for it to accept a draw, and it won't accept a draw at all during
>>>the first 30-40 moves of the game.  Based on that, I can't look at a position
>>>and say whether it should have accepted a draw offer there or not...  It might
>>>have accepted after 4 more moves...  who knows without seeing what went on in
>>>the _game_...
>>
>>This is a logical explanation for the fact that crafty did not agree to a draw
>>but better rules should tell it always to accept a draw if it has only a king.
>>
>>Uri
>
>
>It should, unless it has been disabled by the user.  I can't see any way to
>reach a king only position without crafty seeing it in the search a few moves
>ahead of time.

I agree that cases when crafty did not see a draw or a loss for itself in the
last few moves are not common but I am not sure if they are impossible.

The only cases that I can think about(assuming that there are no unknown bugs)
are:

1)A case when crafty cannot see something because of null move pruning.

2)A case when crafty believed 5 moves ago that another line was leading to a win
and only later understood that it is not good and had to sacrifice to get a draw
position when it has only a king.

Uri



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