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Subject: Re: New Test Suite of "Positional" Positions

Author: Mike S.

Date: 10:18:31 12/06/02

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On December 06, 2002 at 09:07:30, Bob Durrett wrote:

>There is a book, published recently, which is devoted to "positional" positions.
>One hundred and fifty positions are given with the solutions.
>I would publish the positions here, but that would probably be illegal since
>the book is copywritten.

I think the "naked" positions themselves, without the book's comment (or the
games they come from) could be published. There's a website which contains such
data for many chess books for download (the webmaser even respects, when
publishers do not want the pure chess data to be offered there).

http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/~gossimit/c/book.htm

There, I found a file for "Positional Sacrifices" by Neil McDonald (see near the
top of the page, if you scroll down a bit).

I thought, if the positional ideas are related to a *sacrifice*, these could be
especially suitable as computer test positions, because they may have the
necessary "testing character" of the solution move. I'm afraid I can't explain
that properly... but I'm convinced that "normal" moves are not good for test
positions, neither for tactics nor for positional tests. Sacrifices usually
provide a strong "hint" that the engine has seen the pointe of the variation
"requested" (the same goes for situations when pieces which are en prise, are
not taken, IOW when material sacs are refuted for the reason hidden in the
solution).

But I didn't analyse the positions of that book (yet), or see if they are useful
for tests... Maybe somebody has read it and can tell his impressions about it?

(IIRC, I had difficulties to understand the point of some positions without
having the book's text.)

Regards,
M.Scheidl



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