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Subject: Re: K+P ending in practical play

Author: Dave Gomboc

Date: 01:20:04 10/27/98

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On October 26, 1998 at 12:43:26, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>Here is the tail end of a game played between my program (Ferret) on a 533 mhz
>Alpha and Crafty on a dual 450 mhz Pentium II, at time control of 5 0, on ICC.
>
>My program got smoked in a K+P ending it traded into (apparently) voluntarily.
>
>One of the things you hear about if you talk to old-timers in this field is that
>the square of the pawn is a totally important evaluation term.  I'm not sure who
>said it, but someone said that it's worth 100 Elo points.  This was a long time
>ago, back when programs would get killed in endings routinely, but I get the
>idea that this wisdom hasn't been re-evaluated much since then.  It is my
>opinion that square of the pawn is worth almost nothing in practical play, since
>the number of K+P endings that actually occur, with play still in them, seems to
>be approximately zero.
>
>This ending may prove to be a counter-example.  I currently don't have this
>knowledge in my program.  I'm going to stick it back in and see if it
>understands this ending better.
>
>I would be interested in knowing if anyone has any thoughts about this subject
>in general or this ending in particular.

My only thought is that this is really funny, and serendipitous, because we were
talking about this issue just a couple of nights ago on ICC. :)

Dave Gomboc



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