Author: Telmo Escobar
Date: 19:23:22 04/15/03
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On April 15, 2003 at 16:02:05, Bernardo Wesler wrote: >example, lets take fritz 8: >a) what is pawn levers? what does it mean? How to manage these parameters and >how far or much is expected to modify (qualitatively and quantitatively) the >strength or the style of the engine if you set it up or down.... The terminology, I think, comes from Hans Kmoch's best-seller Pawn Power In Chess. I quote from page 16: "The situation in which two opposing pawns can capture each other constitutes an element of pawn play which we shall call thre lever, e.g. PK4 vs PQ4. "A lever creates tension which may or may not explode in capture. To carry out the capture frequently involves a concession. Take for instance the opnening 1.PK4 PK3 2.PQ4 PQ4; if White now captures, the position becomes completely even: 3.PXP,PxP; but if White maintains the tension by playing 3.N-QB3, and the capture is carried out by Black: 3...PXP, 4.NXP, the resulting pawn formation favors White, if only slightly. "Consequently, it usually happens that each side continues trying to induce the other to make the capture. Their mutual efforts are comparable to the stress of power and load in a lever. Hence our term." As I don't have Fritz 8, I don't know how to tune the parameter. I guess that, should you set it down, it creates less sharp play because the engines doesn't like to maintain levers, that is, "unresolved tension". Metaphorically speaking, the engine gets a bit nervous about levers. I don't know how much it affects the strength of the engine. In fact -my guess- it might happen that even the programmers are not totally sure about this. So, allowing the user to fine tune the parameter is great. Telmo
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