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Subject: Re: L.D.Evans-Haik,London 1978 (bob, please look)

Author: Slater Wold

Date: 22:19:37 10/20/01

Go up one level in this thread


On October 20, 2001 at 15:09:16, Jeremiah Penery wrote:

>On October 20, 2001 at 08:57:03, Slater Wold wrote:
>
>>On October 20, 2001 at 05:10:13, Simon Finn wrote:
>>
>>>On October 18, 2001 at 23:34:45, Slater Wold wrote:
>>>
>>>>On October 18, 2001 at 22:55:02, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On October 18, 2001 at 21:01:46, Slater Wold wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On October 18, 2001 at 09:14:43, José Antônio Fabiano Mendes wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>      L.D.Evans-Haik,London 1978 [unusual and difficult position]
>>>>>>>      [D]8/p2P3P/k7/8/8/2q5/6PK/1Q6 b
>>>>>>>       "Surprisingly Black can deliver perpetual check or force stalemate."
>>>
>
><SNIP>
>>>>>>                                    Qa2+ 13. Kd6 Qd2+ 14. Kc7 Qc2+ <HT>
>>>>>>               16    46.88     --   1. ... Qe5+
>>>>>>              time=60:01  cpu=201%  mat=2  n=1693306751  fh=99%  nps=470k
>>>>>>              ext-> chk=1363197943 cap=274706 pp=267447 1rep=117221890 mate=2380
>>>>>>
>>>>>>              predicted=0  nodes=1693306751  evals=7323296
>>>>>>              endgame tablebase-> probes done=48149  successful=4738
>>>>>>              hashing-> trans/ref=73%  pawn=99%  used=14%
>>>>>>              SMP->  split=4869  stop=472  data=13/32  cpu=120:40  elap=60:01
>>>>>>Black(1):
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Fails low @ 46 seconds, and can't resolve it in 59 minutes.  :(
>>>>>
>>>>>This looks like a bug.  That position should never fail low, but always fail
>>>>>high.
>>>
>>>Why? The position is ultimately drawn, but that doesn't mean there won't be some
>>>nasty shocks on the way.
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Either that, or crafty may have found some strange, suicidal attack that
>>>>>succeeds.
>>>>
>>>>If I had to guess, I'd say it'll find something.  I did it with 10 minutes at
>>>>first, and it did this same thing.  59 minutes to resolve a fail low _does_ seem
>>>>a tad long.  Perhaps Bob can help here.
>>>
>>>I had a long look at this position yesterday.
>>>
>>>White will win if he can get his king to a1 - this allows him to
>>>interpose the queen and eventually kill the checks.
>>>
>>>To prevent this, Black has to answer Ka2 with Qa4+/Qa5+ and Kb2 with Qd4+/e5+.
>>>
>>>This requirement restricts where Black can check when the White king is on other
>>>squares too.
>>>
>>>I think (but I'm not 100% sure) that answering Ke3 with Qg3+ loses
>>>because the White king can eventually get to a1.
>>>
>>>Crafty may just have discovered this and needs to spend a
>>>lot of time finding an alternative system of defence that works.
>>>(Black should arrange things to answer Ke3 with Qc5+, for example.)
>>>
>>>Simon
>>>
>>>>
>>>>I can give it more time, if requested.
>>
>>That's a very good explaination.  However, after about 54 billion nodes, I would
>>expect it to have exhausted all of these possibilities.  :)
>
>I think Crafty has some search flaws that cause this kind of behavior.  I've
>seen cases like this (I'm just making up these moves because I don't have an
>actual position handy):
>
>1) The move Ne5 looks good in the first couple plies, but gets white mated in 2
>moves.
>2) Crafty sees this very fast, and finds a better root move, Nh2, which prevents
>the mate.
>3) Nh2 fails low in the next iteration, but isn't getting mated.
>4) Crafty is searching other moves at that ply to find a "better" root move.
>When it gets to Ne5, it practically hangs.  Even though it has already
>discovered it was Mated in 2 after Ne5 and it took practically zero time to find
>it before, this move is searched for a _long_ time at the root, for no apparent
>reason.

If you have found this to be true, I would have to recomend you showing Bob
this.  This is something surely he can fix, and might not know about.



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