Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 21:43:48 07/25/01
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On July 25, 2001 at 21:26:18, Robert Hyatt wrote: >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... The reason a program would take the knight is that being up a pawn in a K+P ending is usually better than being up a pawn in a B vs N ending. I don't think a program "has" to know about this kind of stuff in order to be a GM, any more than a human has to be able to find a middlegame mate in 15 in 1/4 second, has to be able to demonstrate a winning Fine 70 line in 1/2 second, or has to be able to call mate in 95 in a KBN vs KN. Being a GM is not about being able to blend in perfectly with the GM community. It's about being able to generate results comparable to those attained by GM's. If the program is stupid in some circumstances, this is not necessarily fatal as long as the weakness can be masked. bruce
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