Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 11:25:51 12/23/02
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On December 23, 2002 at 14:14:13, Bob Durrett wrote: [snip] >So, if we can put these obvious observations aside, what else is there about the >initial position that is "special"? Another question is: "Do chess engines do >as good a job of analyzing the initial position as they do for other positions?" No. For the most part, they do fairly poorly, even though good chess engines will cough up e4, d4, Nf3 or some other decent start for the most part. >One thing is that most of the pieces are poorly positioned. Mobility is bad. >Tactics are missing. Generally it's not a good position. It's a very even position. If I am not mistaken, the only advantage for white is tempo. >OK. Now, do you suppose other positions occur in chess that are as bad as this >one? If so, how well do chess engines do with such positions? Chess engines do badly with closed positions. They do worse with closed and locked positions. Hence, they try to avoid them. >Perhaps chess engines are not optimized for analysis of such positions because >they occur so rarely. No need to worry about the initial position, since the >book takes care of it. Closed positions are neither rare nor frequent. They are a choice. >A big question in my mind is whether or not chess engines do a reasonable job of >analyzing the initial position. Given the absence of an opening book, is the >initial position really all that difficult for an engine, when compared to other >positions? The Evans Gambit is a nightmare for chess engines to analyze. Hence, most chess engines will have a ?? at some branch point to avoid it. >Anyway, I could go on and on with such questions. > >What do you think? It is well known that chess engines have a spot of trouble with closed positions. Even at that, they will still beat 99.9999% of the people who play against them. I think a more interesting question than: "What positions do chess engines have trouble with?" is: "How do we fix it?" There are people who have written recognizers for closed positions. But that is not the same thing as writing a solver for them. Not even close.
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