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Subject: "Blot Count" chess.

Author: Louis Fagliano

Date: 13:13:48 11/17/03


I’m not a programmer, but it seems to me the way to combat anti-computer chess
is to formulate an algorithm that judges whether or not a position is blocked.

The game 3 of Kasparov-Fritz, after the 12th move, 12. b6, there were white
pawns on e3, d4, c5, and b6, and black pawns on b7, c6, d5, and e4, creating a
trench across the board where piece movement is severely restricted and a “new”
type of chess has to be played –- one where king safety isn’t all that important
because of the sharply limited scope of the pieces and instead gaining space by
advancing your own pawns to smash the “trench” is.

Let’s call a pawn structure with pawns on, say, d4 and c5 of one side and c4 and
d3 of the other where a c4 and c5 combo has to be a white pawn on c4 and a black
pawn on c5 so that the pawns block each other a “blot” for want of a better
word, and a d4, c5, c4, d3 combo would be 4 blots, the minimum number of pawn
groupings that can be called blots.  Blots then increase by two’s, i.e., 6, 8,
10, etc.  After the 12th move of game 3 there would have been 8 blots on the
board.

It should be possible for a programmer to add a “blot counting” algorithm to a
chess program.  If the total amount of blots on the board is, let us say, 6 or
greater, (or a sliding scale can be used) then the program should be instructed
to ignore the parts the program that look for king safety and discourage pawn
moves in front of king, etc.  In a position with a high “blot count” the
computer should be instructed to go to a different subroutine that is optimized
for trench warfare.  If the “blot count” is low or zero, then ignore the “trench
warfare” section of the program.

Is this possible?  Has anyone tried it?



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