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Subject: Re: Why can't Fritz count?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 05:45:45 10/08/98

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On October 08, 1998 at 08:34:37, blass uri wrote:

>
>On October 08, 1998 at 08:28:10, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On October 08, 1998 at 04:35:57, blass uri wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>On October 08, 1998 at 04:28:13, Kai Lübke wrote:
>>>
>>>>On October 08, 1998 at 02:03:56, blass uri wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>On October 07, 1998 at 23:33:53, James T. Walker wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>I gave Fritz 5.16 a position /p4K/P////k// W.  I think that I have that figured
>>>>>>out right.  Anyway, Fritz announces #14 after about 16 sec.  But when you go
>>>>>>through the moves it announces #13 twice, #10 twice,#8 followed by #9 etc.  It
>>>>>>jumps from #6 to #4 no matter what move I make in that position.  After that it
>>>>>>counts on down to mate properly.  It ends up with about a mate in 17.  What
>>>>>>causes this phenom ?  Crafty with the same position announces #17 on the first
>>>>>>move then while pondering it finds mate in 15.  After that it counts down by one
>>>>>>to mate.  That seems fairly normal.
>>>>>>Jim
>>>>>
>>>>>Fritz never knew to count
>>>>>It was designed to play chess and not to count the number of moves to mate
>>>>>
>>>>>I think that this is because of hash tables
>>>>>Maybe fritz found that some position leads to mate and remember it in the hash
>>>>>tables as mate without the number of moves
>>>>>
>>>>>After it go to the same position again in the search it evaluates it as
>>>>>checkmate without number of moves and this is the reason that it cannot count
>>>>
>>>>The "mate in 8, then on the next move mate in 9" stuff is something you often
>>>>see in Fritz engines (Hiarcs and Junior have the same problems sometimes).
>>>>Crafty has a special code that assures that a "mate in N" is never followed by
>>>>a "mate in N+k" where k>=0.
>>>>I'm just waiting for someone to find a position where Fritz will not be able to
>>>>mate because of this... :-)
>>>>
>>>>---
>>>>Shep
>>>
>>>The main problem with fritz is that often the mate in N is only an illusion of
>>>fritz.
>>>
>>>It is a bad idea to use a special code for fritz telling it to look after mate
>>>in N only for mate in N-1 or less before solving this problem because the result
>>>may be: no mate found.
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>
>>I don't believe that fritz is ever *wrong* when it announces a mate.  It might
>>say mate in 10 when there is a mate in 6 that can be played.  But I have *never*
>>seen a program announce mate in N when there is no mate there, unless it is a
>>new program with bugs.
>
>I did not see it announce a mate when there is no mate there but I saw it
>announce mate in N when there is mate only in more than N
>I remember that I tried a simple position of king and rook against king
>(white king h1 rook g2 black king f3) and it announced mate in 10 when
>I think that there is only a mate in 18
>
>Uri

it's actually a mate in 16...  :)



>
>>
>>But *if* you find a mate in N, after your opponent plays a move, it will not
>>hurt a thing to search until you find a mate in N-1...  even if you can't find
>>it time will stop you eventually, and in 99.99% of the times the N-1 mate is
>>there and can be found within the time limit...



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