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Subject: Re: Question about possible pawn positions

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 08:29:49 12/29/02

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On December 29, 2002 at 10:16:33, Dan Andersson wrote:

>There are a number of way to check if a pawn position is pseudo-legal.
>Backtracking is fairly cheap. And if you want to bound it by the number of
>captures made it is easy. Add a cost array and you are done. A quicker test is
>using this property:
> The 'backwards capture triangle' area of any pawn must not have more pawns in
>it than the number of squares at its base. This can also be bounded by the
>available number of captures.
>    P
>   xxx
>  xxxxx
> bbbbbbb
>
>MvH Dan Andersson

I did not think a lot about the problem but
you need first a clear definition to decide if a pawn structure is legal

It is easy to detect part of the illegal structures but proving that all the
other structures are possible is not a trivial task.

Here is an example that is not trivial


Is the following pawn structure legal?

[D]4k3/8/P7/PPPPPPP1/1ppppppp/7p/8/4K3 w - - 0 1

After one minute of looking at the position I coould not convince myself that it
has to be legal but also could not find a proof that it is illegal.

It is clear that if you add a piece it is illegal.

Uri



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