Author: martin fierz
Date: 12:41:43 06/21/02
Go up one level in this thread
On June 21, 2002 at 12:28:49, Christophe Theron wrote: >On June 21, 2002 at 06:53:41, Uri Blass wrote: > >>On June 21, 2002 at 04:57:44, Russell Reagan wrote: >> >>>On June 21, 2002 at 04:38:04, Uri Blass wrote: >>> >>>>How much time does your program need to see that it is a draw? >>> >>>At least a few more weeks :) >>> >>>Russell >> >>It is an easy draw for the following reasons; >> >> >>1)White need always to move the knight by Nb3 N.. Nb3 N.. Nb3 N.. when the >>knight is never captured(the knight is never captured in b3 and we need to prove >>that the knight has a safe black square to go in order to prove that it is a >>draw). >> >>2)The black king cannot control a1 so the black bishop needs to be in the long >>diagnol in order to prevent a1 from the knight. >> >>3)The black bishop in the long diagnol can not control a5 so the black king >>needs to control that square. >> >>4)3 means that the black king cannot control c1 and d2 so the black bishop needs >>to control these squares but the black bishop must be in b2 in order to control >>both a1 and c1 and it does not control d2 from that square. >> >>I believe that even programmers with rating of 1500 can find that it is a draw >>and I wonder if one of them was smart enough to write the relevant code to >>explain it to the computer. >> >>Uri > > > >The question is: will it make the program stronger? > >I can easily see how it can make a program weaker by slowing it down, and I >seriously doubt it will increase the program's rating by a single elo point. > >Maybe if the programmer in question is smart enough he will decide to ignore >this particular case. > > > > Christophe i guess you are right that adding such rules in general would make a program a bit weaker, because it's slower. but not all people care about that. i once played some correspondence chess, and used fritz to check my moves, as probably >90% of CC players do. at that time, fritz was a preprocessor (i don't know what it is now), and would come up with weird evaluations. the ugliest example i can remember is an attacking position for white, who has sacrificed a pawn. in return, the black king is rather unsafe, and the position is relatively open. every child knows that in such positions the attacker should never ever exchange queens(at least if it got one chess lesson by me...). fritz' mainline was a queen exchange with an eval of +0.1. if you play the exchange, the eval immediately goes to -1.0 . what happens is that the preprocessor gave white an initial advantage due to the bad position of the black king. after the queen exchange, it removed that, and saw no compensation any more. this type of behavior was obviously good enough to make fritz a very strong engine, but if you want an engine to help you analyze, it is close to inacceptable. i would rather have an engine which is slower, but does not have this kind of limitations. as i would like an engine which is slower, but knows that other position is a draw. most tactics that i need to check with an engine are found in about a second anyway, and if not, i can always wait... aloha martin
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