Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 14:45:31 01/09/98
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On January 09, 1998 at 14:26:44, Howard Exner wrote: >r3rk2/ppq2pbQ/2p1b1p1/4p1B1/2P3P1/3P1B2/P3PPK1/1R5R w - - id"Seiriwan - >Sokolov,A"; bm Qxg7+; > >Is this an example of a singular extension mate theme? >Will this be difficult to solve as a Queen and rook are >sacrificed followed by the "quiet" Bf6? I don't know whether these mates are efficiently found with singular extension, that was just a nasty rumor that I started. I don't know if singular extension is good for anything. The paper that I read originally about it claimed a pretty big benefit from this, but a subsequent paper claimed much more modest benefit, and there were caveats that the reason it might work for DT could have something to do with DT's search, which was pretty sloppy near the tips. Absolutely no offense to DT or DB or DT or Hsu or Campbell, but, I think the two statements taken with the largest number of grains of salt by this community in the last ten years are: 1) Botvinnik had a working chess program. 2) Singular extension is mythical and magic. I don't know of anyone who will make a statement of the form: "I/We do singular extension, it helped us a lot, we proved to ourselves that it is a good thing, and for you guys who are curious, here is a position that we think it helps a lot in, and here is some other cool info involving lots of other interesting numbers, for instance, look how many more we get in the ECM suite with this!" If someone wants to make all or part of the above statement, I would be delighted to hear it. This problem is very hard for my program. I do not know why. I suspect it is hard because white goes down a tremendous amount of material and doesn't get it back immediately. This is similar to Wac 141 (for me), although harder. Mine is apparently vulnerable to this sort of thing. I bet other programs get it quickly. bruce
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