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Subject: Re: Strange position - who can reach it with minimum moves?

Author: Heiner Marxen

Date: 12:20:17 07/11/01

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On July 11, 2001 at 14:33:12, Christoph Fieberg wrote:

>On July 11, 2001 at 12:22:15, Heiner Marxen wrote:
>
>>On July 11, 2001 at 11:45:17, Christoph Fieberg wrote:
>>
>>>I composed the following position:
>>>[D]r2qk2r/8/8/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/8/8/R2QK2R b KQkq - 0 80
>>>
>>>Who can construct a game to reach it?
>>>
>>>In my first attempt I needed 161 moves (last move was 81.Ke1).
>
>161 moves was meant as half-moves! (as you could see from the notion 81.Ke1)
>Sorry, that I did not express excatly.

I see!  Sorry, could have guessed that myself.
To avoid this sort of confusion, in the context of computer chess half-moves
are often called "plies".

>>
>>If the white K has moved, its castling rights KQ should be removed!
>>
>
>In my game both kings had moved! Therefore no castling possible any more.

Aha.  In that case the same mate in 8 does follow, but the solution time
of Chest reduces from 330.54 secs to 296.10 secs.  I didn't expect the
difference to be that large... Chest still can surprise its author :-)


>>>Who needs less moves?
>>
>>IIRC, Popeye can construct proof games.  But more than 300 plies?
>
>As explained only 161 plies are necessary! Can Popeye cope with it?

I have no idea, since I did not really use that feature.
I have studied its source code for a similar job, i.e. help mates,
which uses basically the same technique.  The program calculates a good
minimum distance between source and destination position and uses this
to prune early.

Whether this method is good enough for this problem... I just don't know.
You could try it yourself: Popeye is sort of free (GNU copyleft IIRC).

Regards,
Heiner


>Regards,
>Christoph
>
>
>>I cannot imagine any program to proove the shortest proof game for such
>>a position... but then, what do I know?
>>
>>>Best regards,
>>>Christoph
>>
>>Regards,
>>Heiner



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