Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 00:52:45 08/09/02
Go up one level in this thread
On August 08, 2002 at 17:37:11, José Carlos wrote:
>On August 08, 2002 at 07:17:32, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On August 08, 2002 at 00:11:11, eric guttenberg wrote:
>>
>>>I recently bought the Saitek Cosmic LCD-style chess computer.
>>>
>>>I was impressed with it right away. It is a sleek, handsome little
>>>machine with a very easy to see display, a wide range of features
>>>and options and appeared to play a strong game. Except...
>>>
>>>I was not too surprised when it could not do the KBN v K mate. But
>>>then I discovered it could not mate a lone King with King and 2 Bishops
>>>...or with King and Rook...or with King and Queen. It certainly plays
>>>the middlegame well but if you get into the endgame you will find
>>>a lot of positions where you can play for and get a draw even when
>>>when the position should be dead lost.
>>>
>>>For as much as I liked this guy at first, it is just a little depressing
>>>to see him cluelessly shifting his king back and forth in queen-up
>>>position. He will push the pawn in a K+P vs K very efficiently but
>>>while he gets the Queen all I have to do is move my King away from
>>>the side of the board and -voila- Cosmic turns into Mortimer Snerd.
>>>
>>>eric
>>
>>
>>
>>A gentleman should resign when having the weakest side of K/KQ or K/KR, K/KBB or
>>K/KBN.
>
> K/KBN is difficult if you don't know very well the technique to mate. I've
>seen strong players (~2300 FIDE) not being able to checkmate with K/KBN with
>little time on the clock. Also KR/KQ is very difficult with little time and/or
>without the right knowledge.
> But you're right about gentlemen... there're very few, but they exist :)
>
> José C.
A few months ago I had to improve Tiger's technique on KBNK. The program was
able to mate this ending on a PC even with little time on the clock, but could
not do it if under time pressure on a Palm.
I must say that I have been forced to add some curious rules in order to solve
this problem. Now Tiger can mate even if it just reaches ply depth 6, which on
the Palm generally takes one second.
But it was not an easy problem to solve.
Christophe
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