Author: Miguel A. Ballicora
Date: 10:41:51 07/26/01
Go up one level in this thread
On July 26, 2001 at 06:24:12, martin fierz wrote: >On July 26, 2001 at 00:43:48, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >>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. > >this may be right, but this special weakness looks awful. a human expert needs >to look at this for one second to see that Bxc3 is dead lost. looking a bit >longer, i conclude that 1. Kxb4 should be an easy draw in the line 1. Kxb4 Nxe4 >2. Be3 Nf6 3. Bxa7 Nxg4 4. h3 - i see no reason why black should win this. equal >material and only 2 pawns left. dann's idea of putting all white pawns on black >squares and leaving the black a&b pawns on the board looks very suspicious to >me. > >i just think that this piece of missing knowledge is a) extremely important for >all kinds of endings, and b) it should be rather easy to implement - it's about >distant passers, doubled pawns, and what to trade - when you have the advantage, >trade pieces, else, trade pawns (as in the line above). > >if i had written a chess program and it were to play such moves (and i'm sure it >would play even much worse moves!) i would not be able to sleep well until i put >this knowledge in! Commercial programs seemed to be optimized for playing games rather than analyzing positions. So, if you lose an ugly game once in a while, programmers do not care. However, if you want the program to analyze positions, this kind of oversights are terrible. That is why I think that the programs reached a GM level in competition but there are far from being a GM analyst in your home. You cannot trust them, particularly in endgames. Regards, Miguel >with such glaring holes in chess knowledge, i would be surprised if a program >could mask it's weaknesses all the time. > >cheers > martin
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