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Subject: Re: detecting blackades and draws through not advancing

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 20:44:04 01/13/03

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On January 13, 2003 at 23:14:56, scott farrell wrote:

>Guys,
>
>I am after some comments here. I have some code and ideas I need people to help
>validate.
>
>My code uses the detect draw-by-rep routine/hash etc. Currently I only run this
>when there is a bishop or knight or less on the board, as I dont know how safe
>the code is yet. It compares the pawn hash to all previous pawn hashes in the
>tree, if it finds a hit, and the material is the same , it scores it as 0.0,
>meaning: if the pawns are in the same config, and material is unchanged, then
>with all the searching you have done you cant progress at all, just call it a
>draw.
>
>Does anyone do any blockade checking in their code?
>Is my idea similar, different, stupid.
>
>My chompster lost a drawn game recently, the position was similar to this below.
> It was down material, and found a long sequence of moves where it could get 1
>pawn back, and so it did, at the expense of opening the postion and then loosing
>which was beyond the horizon. To a human it is clearly a draw, just blockade
>!!!.
>
>This is an over simplfied position, so it is simple enough for me personally to
>work out.
>
>Clearly either Ke3 or Be3 draws.
>
>Ruffian thinks the score is -1.1 for white at about 16 plies and 30 secs.
>
>When I enable my new blockade code it sees a score of 0.0 for Kd3 immediately -
>which is great.
>
>What is even better is that for black to move in the same position without the
>blockade code it thinks it is winning big time, and just shuffles pieces around,
>horizoning the draw-by-rep, and doesnt quite get to 100 plies to see draw by
>fifty moves.
>
>With the blockade code it first thinks of e3 as the only "progress" it can make
>against the blockade, then it tries some stalling moves in between to push
>things over the horizon (oops). After a fail low on depth 8, it realises it is
>blockaded, and after a research at full width it returns Bc6 with a score of
>0.08 (I think this is just an artifact of lazyeval and should be 0.0), and knows
>white is going to play Ke3 immediately.
>
>I think this is amazing progress for my chompster, and an extra 5 lines of code
>added ... amazing !!!!
>
>Maybe I can take some nice draws in CCT5 against ruffian !!!! ... I wish :)
>
>[D] 8/8/1B2k3/1b2p3/4p3/3p4/3P1K2/8 w - - 0 1
>[D] 8/8/1B2k3/1b2p3/4p3/3p4/3P1K2/8 b - - 0 1

Heuristically, it is a very interesting idea.  I wonder if it is sound?




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