Author: Richard A. Fowell
Date: 11:26:56 03/23/02
Go up one level in this thread
On March 22, 2002 at 05:18:07, Frankie Kam wrote: <snip> >Are there any chess positions where the best move, let's say >Bh7!!! is a brilliant move, but even the best Chess engines take >let's say > 1200 secs to solve - even on a K6 or Pen4 PC? <snip> Definitely. There are probably myriads of them, which makes this a bit hard for a particular position or group of positions to be the "Holy Grail". However, if one's program solved the "Nolot Suite" of 11 problems each in tournament time control, they would be pretty happy. Here's a page by Bruce Moreland (author of Ferret) on the Nolot Suite: http://www.seanet.com/~brucemo/nolot/nolot.htm This suite was compiled in 1994. Here's a snippet of commentary to help convey how difficult the positions were at the time, and the lengths to which some of us take these things: <about the first position> "A very deep combimation, that Tasc R30 or Genius 2 running on a pentium would take between a few months and a few years to find. The best Novag computer, the Diablo 68000, finds 26.Nxh6 after 7 months and a half (Pierre Nolot has let it run on the position for 14 months and one day, until a power failure stopped an analysis of over 80 000 000 000 nodes!) but for wrong reasons : it evaluates white's position as inferior and thinks this move would enable it to draw." Perhaps the easiest position is number 2, of which Pierre Nolot said in 1994 "The best programs should be able to find 25.Rxc5!! in a few weeks." On my Mac G4 867 MHz, the freeware MacChess finds the key in "only" 6 hrs, 17 minutes, with a significant eval jump in 11 hrs, 7 minutes. and about 27,000,000,000 nodes. Of course, this many nodes was 4.7 months for the Novag Diablo 68000. The positions are: r3qb1k/1b4p1/p2pr2p/3n4/Pnp1N1N1/6RP/1B3PP1/1B1QR1K1 w - - bm Nxh6; id "Position 1"; r4rk1/pp1n1p1p/1nqP2p1/2b1P1B1/4NQ2/1B3P2/PP2K2P/2R5 w - - bm Rxc5; id "Position 2"; r2qk2r/ppp1b1pp/2n1p3/3pP1n1/3P2b1/2PB1NN1/PP4PP/R1BQK2R w KQkq - bm Nxg5; id "Position 3"; r1b1kb1r/1p1n1ppp/p2ppn2/6BB/2qNP3/2N5/PPP2PPP/R2Q1RK1 w kq - bm Nxe6; id "Position 4"; r2qrb1k/1p1b2p1/p2ppn1p/8/3NP3/1BN5/PPP3QP/1K3RR1 w - - bm e5; id "Position 5"; rnbqk2r/1p3ppp/p7/1NpPp3/QPP1P1n1/P4N2/4KbPP/R1B2B1R b kq - bm axb5; id "Position 6"; 1r1bk2r/2R2ppp/p3p3/1b2P2q/4QP2/4N3/1B4PP/3R2K1 w k - bm Rxd8+; id "Position 7"; r3rbk1/ppq2ppp/2b1pB2/8/6Q1/1P1B3P/P1P2PP1/R2R2K1 w - - bm Bxh7+; id "Position 8"; r4r1k/4bppb/2n1p2p/p1n1P3/1p1p1BNP/3P1NP1/qP2QPB1/2RR2K1 w - - bm Ng5; id "Position 9"; r1b2rk1/1p1nbppp/pq1p4/3B4/P2NP3/2N1p3/1PP3PP/R2Q1R1K w - - bm Rxf7; id "Position 10"; r1b3k1/p2p1nP1/2pqr1Rp/1p2p2P/2B1PnQ1/1P6/P1PP4/1K4R1 w - - bm Rxh6; id "Position 11";
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