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Subject: Re: Shredder blind? Stefan? Your answer?

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 00:05:59 08/14/01

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On August 13, 2001 at 07:53:22, Harald Faber wrote:

>On August 13, 2001 at 07:14:48, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>
>>On August 13, 2001 at 04:45:37, Harald Faber wrote:
>>
>>>And what makes me wonder is that how can Shredder say +0.2 at d=10/11/12 when
>>>directly after Rxb3 Shredder only needs d=8 to see the disaster.
>>
>>Just simple nullmove I think.
>>
>>--
>>GCP
>
>I thought nullmove only fails in Zugzwang positions?!

Null move screws up if you give up material and then take a while to quietly
smash the opponent.

Here's an example:

Set up the typical case of a black pawn on f3, white pawns on f2, g3, h2, king
on g1.

White to move, 4-ply search:

<some dumb move>
Qh3
<some other dumb move>
Qg2#

No problem.  This is detected and possibly avoided by substituting "<some smart
move>" for "<some dumb move>".

With null move R=2, white passes the first move, and gives black one ply (4-2-1)
to generate a threat.  So:

<pass>
Qh3

No problem, white is happy and cuts off because, say, black sacrificed a pawn to
achieve this situation, and since the pawn isn't recovered we're certainly below
beta.  White is nowhere near to finding this, actually; even an extra ply
doesn't help.

I tested the Rxb3 problem on my program with R=3, and it took about ten times
longer to find it than with R=2.

bruce




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