Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Question about possible pawn positions

Author: John Lowe

Date: 09:28:18 12/29/02

Go up one level in this thread


On December 29, 2002 at 11:29:49, Uri Blass wrote:

>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

Go on Uri!

If you can achieve that position in a legal game it will go down in hisory as
Uri's zipper ;)




This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.