Author: Laurence Chen
Date: 17:16:59 12/11/00
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On December 11, 2000 at 19:21:56, G. R. Morton wrote: >Century 3 is touted as a superb (the best?) positional chess player, which my >own non-scientific tests on well known GM actual game positions seem to bear >out. Are there are any formal positional test results? Does any strong player >(besides the reviews at the Rebel site) have an opinion Century 3’s positional >play as the best (whether or not it may make it to the SSDF top few)? I think this is a gray or grey area, I don't use Rebel Century because it's a DOS program, and therefore I cannot give a valid opinion about the engine itself. There are other chess engines out there, Shredder 6, Junior 6, Hiarcs 7.32 could be labeled as positional style of chess engine. The problem lies in the definition of positional player. Let us look at from a human playing style, Karpov, Petrosian, Botvinnik would fall into this category of positional playing style. Both Karpov and Petrosian are pragmatic players, they like to stop all counterplay before they engage in their own attack, it's like a python style, squeeze your opponent to death slowly and surely without allowing any counter attack. I don't see any of the chess engines which are capable of playing like these great players. So what is the definition of positional player? How about, maneuvering in quiet positions? Well this is a very gray area, it's difficult to define this area. One thing in common of the 3 players I mentioned above, these players are well known for their so called positional sacrifices, prophylaxis, and maneuvering in quiet position. If you studied the games played by these 3 players that is a very common pattern. So perhaps one way to label a chess engine as a positional player would be create a test suite based on positional sacrifices, and see if these chess engines will choose the correct move played by these great players. Another test position to see if these chess engines understand maneuvering in quiet positions. And last, test suites based on Prophylaxis. I believe these three typesof test suites would be needed. Here's a very difficult positional sacrifice. [D]r4rk1/3b1pbp/1p1p4/pP1PpP2/N1P4q/3Bp2P/P5P1/R2Q1RK1 w - - 0 19 The best move is 19. Qg4!!, from Seirawan-Kozul, Wijk aan Zee 1991 Here's a very difficult prophylaxis positions: [D]r2q1rk1/pp1bbpp1/2n1p2p/1BPp4/3P1B2/2P2N2/P4PPP/R2Q1RK1 w - - 0 13 The best move is 13. Rc1!, from Kasparov-Anand, Amsterdam 1996 Here's a maneuvering position. [D]3r1rk1/2q1bppp/p4n2/P1pPp3/RpP1P3/4BQ1P/1P1N2P1/4R1K1 b - - 0 25 The best move is 25. ... Rd6!, from Tal-Petrosian, Riga 1958 Regards, Laurence
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