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Subject: Re: Can your program avoid BxN?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 18:26:18 07/25/01

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On July 25, 2001 at 18:36:08, James T. Walker wrote:

>This position arose today in a game between Hiarcs 7.32 vs Century 3.2.
>Although Hiarcs searched for 6 minutes on an Athlon 900 with 128M hash and it's
>score dropped from the previous 0.87 to -0.56 it still could not resist the BxN
>which I believe loses.  I think almost any move which saves the Bishop keeps
>white alive.  Best is probably Kxb4 or Be3.  Crafty is very fast to avoid BxN.
>Junior7 is slow but finds it in a little over 1 minute.
>
>[D]8/p4k1p/6p1/8/1p2P1P1/1Kn3P1/3B3P/8 w


This is all about knowledge.  White's bishop is the only hope to restrain the
black passed pawn and also help on the other side of the board.  If it goes,
black's distant passer makes this a normally won ending for black.

I can't imagine a program trading the last piece and giving the opponent a
distant passer, just on general principles, unless it sees some sort of tactical
trick to sneak in its own pawn even quicker...

If a program wants to aspire to be a GM, it _must_ know something about such
endings...



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