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Subject: Re: Try very easy mate.

Author: Dieter Buerssner

Date: 11:39:50 11/04/03

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On November 04, 2003 at 11:06:27, leonid wrote:

>Try the next position that have good branching factor and, probably, will be
>easy to solve by selective, or by brute force search.

Hmmm. I used my chess engine (Yace), which in your terminoligy, you would
probably call selective. It still should be reliable (never announce a mate in
x, when there is no mate in x but perhaps only a mate in x+1/2/... Of course it
might announce mate in x, when mate in x-1/2/... is possible). I did neither get
a good branching factor, nor an easy solution ....

> 1qkrr3/Rn2q3/PRPBqQ2/nqpbqB2/NQ2Nb2/1Q2Qq2/1Q2Qq2/1K2Qq2 w - -

... actually got no solution at all in 30 minutes on my P4 2.53 GHz with 100 MB
hash and using about 50% of the CPU (another analysis, that I did not want to
stop is running at the same time with more hash).

Perhaps, it might be easy by selective search, when extending more aggressively
(many checks in a row are possible). BTW. It took 17 seconds to finish the depth
1 search. I guess many engines will evene need longer (but did not try any).
Branching factor from depth 1 to 2 was indeed good (17 s, then 21 s). ply 3:
1:02, 4: 14:20. Hardly one could consider it good ...

I don't complain at all, but personally (and probably I am not the only one
here), I find more "natural" chess positions for mate problems more interesting.
Of course, it was my choice, to test your position anyway (I was curios).
Especially, I would find those problems most interesting, where a mate comes
rather surprisingly after a rather balanced score. Seeing several iterations in
a row with rather high score from almost the beginning seems less interesting
for normal playing engines. Sure, when we have 12 Qs on the board already, a
rather high score may not mean much.

You are probably aware, that the position cannot be reached in a chess games.

My favorite mate problem (already discussed here several times) is:

6r1/2rp1kpp/2qQp3/p3Pp1P/1pP2P2/1P2KP2/P5R1/6R1 w - -

Regards,
Dieter





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