Author: Mark Young
Date: 12:13:48 08/28/98
Go up one level in this thread
On August 28, 1998 at 10:12:22, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On August 27, 1998 at 21:51:33, Robert Henry Durrett wrote: > >>On August 27, 1998 at 20:39:45, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >><snip> >>>I think Junior's playing fine... It made two "odd" moves today.. one was >>>Rh5, which put the rook in a bad place, the other was Bh8 which put the >>>bishop on a bad square and also prevented the rook from being able to go to >>>h8-b8 or wherever to get to the queen-side... But the moves were *not* >>>gross errors, just simple positional errors... >>> >>>Yudasin also played some ugly moves along the way, and at one point turned >>>a really significant advantage into nothing with just a couple of moves. He >>>commented on this later. However, he took advantage of a black rook out of >>>play and rushed into a nice tactical position that was winning. But he also >>>*almost* let Junior equalize, although I think that Junior was more interested >>>in kingside activity than queenside, and in this game the queenside was where >>>all the action happened... >>> >>>Yudasin tried to attack on the kingside himself, but after black tangled >>>his pieces (the rook and bishop) he switched to the queen-side quite >>>nicely and broke through there. Well played. However, I disagree that >>>Junior embarassed itself... it repeated the rebel/anand result, which is >>>*not* easy... >> >>Yes, I got the same impression by watching the game. The thing, though, that >>stands out in my mind is the way one of Junior's rooks got out of play in the >>same manner (side of board locked in by pawns)in both games! Although this is >>only a sample size of two, it still makes me sit up and take notice. Maybe >>Junior should be "tweaked" to make piece coordination (especially keeping rooks >>working together) have a higher priority. Also, this maybe should be considered >>as also a piece activity issue. [A word of caution: consult a chessmaster >>about this before modifying Junior.] I would suggest that Junior should have >>become concerned about the extremely poor placement of the rooks and done >>something about it long before it was too late. >> >>In the second game, unlike the first, there came a time when Junior could not >>seem to figure out what was going on in the position and could not, therefore, >>make anything like a plan. How do you fix that???? > >The following is pure speculation, and Amir/Shay can certainly correct what is >wrong... but my opinion is that Junior relies heavily on "piece/square" tables >for evaluation... Here's why I believe that: > >1. very fast NPS rate, approaching Fritz, which is an ASM program. > >2. a positional example that I have seen repeated often against both Ferret >and Crafty on ICC: rook on the 7th rank. I have watched Junior repeatedly >stick a rook on the 7th, after the king has vacated the 8th, and there are *no* >pawns on the 7th either. IE the rook is attacking nothing, not constraining the >king at all, yet it goes there and even more important *stays* there. > >If the piece/square speculation is true, that can lead to one type of problem, >because you set the piece/square tables up at the root, using a pre-processor >that tries to figure out the best/worst squares for each piece, based on static >analysis of the board. But it is very difficult to statically figure outhow to >untangle pieces, which might explain what was going on.. and when the action >swung from the kingside to the queenside, this type of static analysis doesn't >make a "smooth" transition from one side to the other, like an endpoing analysis >could do; rather, it plays on the kingside until something becomes apparent to >the pre-analyzer that causes it to adjust piece/square values to start >attracting things to the other side... > >Again, all speculation, but it can explain this perhaps... If this is what is happening to junior is this problem fixable, or is this just an inherent weakness in "piece/square" tables?
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