Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 11:00:26 10/05/01
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On October 05, 2001 at 13:41:12, Bruce Moreland wrote: >On October 05, 2001 at 01:33:34, Slater Wold wrote: > >>On October 05, 2001 at 00:44:23, Dann Corbit wrote: >> >>>Clearly b6+ and Be3 both win. >>> >>>The only question I have is, does Kb3 also win, and if not, why not? >> >>I believe from your posts, and Crafty's eval, Kb3 also wins. Crafty shows a 4+ >>pawn advatange even with Kb3. But I don't believe it's the quickest way, or the >>best move. But I do believe it wins. >> >>It's like going to the grocery store. You have 3 means of getting there: >> >>Helicopter: b6+ >> >>Car: Be3 >> >>Walking: Kb3 >> >>Which would you choose? I have no doubts walking will get you there, as I have >>no doubt Kb3 wins. :) >> >> >> >>Slate > >This is sounding like a crappy problem that should either be ignored or set so >that all three of those moves are taken as solutions. > >The problem is that you can't tell in many cases if the program sees a win, so >you could give a wrong program credit for being right, and vice versa. I agree with your assessment. I think (in particular) some EPD chess problems are simply bad problems. For instance, there may be 3 ways to win, and so there are 3 solutions. But one of the 3 ways might look good in the first 6 plies, then look really bad for 4 more plies, and suddenly a solution appears through a surprise at ply 11. So, some program makes it 5 plies, and answers with "the right answer" at ply 5 with an eval of -192 and adds one to the score. Ideally, a test problem should: 1. Not be stupendously easy. 3 ply solutions are not worth the bother. 2. Not be stupendously hard. All day solutions are not pragmatically useful. 3. Have a single *clear* answer that is found after a fairly difficult search of at least one second but not more than ten minutes. (There could be special case sets that take days to solve, but they won't help you to improve your chess program much. Only to know that you have improved it after the fact). The very best problems are those that can be proven -- the solution move wins and other moves lose. Probably, there are very few of these problems known.
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