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Subject: Re: Interesting endgame position

Author: Daniel Clausen

Date: 13:37:57 06/08/01

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Hi

On June 08, 2001 at 16:23:39, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On June 08, 2001 at 16:21:01, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On June 08, 2001 at 16:08:52, John Merlino wrote:
>>
>>>On June 08, 2001 at 15:19:09, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>Here is a cute position that occurred between a commercial program and Crafty
>>>>last week:
>>>>
>>>>[D] 8/p4pp1/3rk2p/4p3/2P5/2K4P/P2R1PP1/8 w - - 0 1
>>>>
>>>>Crafty was black and moved the rook to d6, offering a trade.  The opponent
>>>>took it and was happy to do so.  Unfortunately, white is lost.  White saw
>>>>the passed pawn and apparently was quite happy.  Crafty's static evaluation
>>>>for this position is -1.0 roughly.
>>>>
>>>>For those that "don't do endgames" black's king-side majority is the problem
>>>>here.  White's passer gets blockaded, white has to desert it to stop black's
>>>>kingside passer he makes after a few pawn moves, and then black eats white's
>>>>a pawn and promotes.
>>>>
>>>>Instructional, at least.  These are the kinds of positions you want to
>>>>see your program get right.  I saw a very similar one against a GM today,
>>>>playing Crafty.  He calculated for a long time after crafty offered to trade
>>>>the last piece on the board.  He traded, and 10 moves later realized he was
>>>>dead lost. :)
>>>
>>>How did this game end after the rooks were traded?
>>>
>>>jm
>>
>>
>>Black wins easily.
>
>
>I should have added, the point here is that white ends up in a king and pawn
>ending with a passed pawn to none for black.  Black has a kingside majority that
>many programs ignore.  Here it is decisive.

I'm not a good chess player but trying to summarize. Please correct me if I'm
wrong. Black can easily transform the pawn majority on the kingside into a
passer. After that White and Black both have a passer but Black wins because his
(or her, or its :) passer is farer (is that an English word?) away than white's.
Basically a program (or a human) has to recognize that in this situation the
pawn majority for black on the kingside is worth a passer.

Does this sound about right?

Regards,

Sargon



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