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Subject: Re: King, rook pawn and wrong bishop endgames

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 14:44:58 10/18/00

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On October 18, 2000 at 10:10:51, Dieter Buerssner wrote:

>I am trying to find a relatively fool proof way, to detect, if
>an endgame with a rook pawn (or a doubled rook pawn) and the wrong
>bishop against a lonely king, is a draw. Ideally I would like an
>algorithm, that only needs the loosing king square (perhaps the
>winning king square), the pawn square and the side to move, and it
>should detect, if this is a draw.
>
>I tried so far, to only use the pawn square and the losing king
>square. When the loosing king is closer to the corner, than the
>pawn, it is a draw. When the distance is the same, the side to move
>will be better. But this does not allways work. I think, it would be better, to
>be certain of the draw, and in compilcated cases, that can not be decided, give
>a small positive score to the bishop side. Have you any ideas about a simple
>algorithm? Would it be different, when the rook pawn
>is doubled? And when the losing side has a pawn, that say is not too advanced?
>
>One nice example from Tarrasch "Das Schachspiel":
>
>[D] 8/4k3/8/7P/4B3/5K2/8/8 w - - 0 1
>
>White wins with 1.h6 Kf7 2.Bh7
>
>Which programs, that have knowledge about this sort of endgame will
>show a winning score without search and TBs? I tried this with
>Crafty, and it shows a draw score up to depth 6. This is of course
>problem in this game, because it only takes a fraction of a second
>to reach depth 7, but it might be dangerous, when the position
>is reached in the search.
>
>Regards,
>Dieter

If you just check to see if the black king is in the g7..h8 box, it will work
fine.  This is not a very restrictive case, but I doubt you will encounter a lot
of practical examples where it matters if you do it exactly right.  If programs
can achieve this draw, and they have any understanding of it, I think they do a
good job.

If someone drops a bowling ball on your head, it doesn't matter much what kind
of spin it has on it when it hits.

bruce




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