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Subject: Re: (OT) Active Rooks === Mark Dvoretsky [ChessCafe.com]

Author: Gareth McCaughan

Date: 16:46:48 02/12/03

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On February 12, 2003 at 12:24:12, José Antônio Fabiano Mendes wrote:

>        Please see ==> http://www.chesscafe.com/Dvoretsky/dvoretsky.htm
>
> Rook activity is the cornerstone in the evaluation and play of rook endgames.
> This activity may take diverse forms: from attacking the enemy pawns, to the
> support of one’s own passed pawns, to the interdiction or pursuit of the enemy
> king.
>
> There are indeed times when the rook must remain passive, and implement purely
> defensive functions. But even then, one must stubbornly seek out any possibility
> of activating the rook, not even stopping at sacrificing pawns, or making your
> own king’s position worse.

It's not so very off-topic. I asked Crafty 19.2 about the three
exercise positions. It didn't like Dvoretsky's preferred approach
in the first of them. After ...Re3; Rxb6 Ra3; Rb2 Ra4 (when,
Dvoretsky says, the players agreed a draw), Crafty thinks White
is +1.21. (That's after about 4x10^8 nodes, about 12 minutes on
my machine, depth 17.) The PV doesn't give much sign that it knows
what it's doing: Rc2 g4; Re2 Ke4; Rd2 Kf5; Rc2 Ra3; Rb2 Ra4; Kg2 Ra3;
Rd2 Rc3; a4 Ra3. In contrast, after a similar amount of grinding from
the initial position it sees white at +0.67 but slowly rising with
each iteration, and wants to play ...Kf6.

Is Crafty just plain wrong here? How do other programs do?

--
g



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