Author: Gerd Isenberg
Date: 12:42:24 02/04/04
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On February 04, 2004 at 14:15:33, Tom Likens wrote: > >Hello Everyone, > >I'm getting ready to implement some new features in my engine and >one of the items on my TODO list is to give the engine some rudimentary >planning capablities. The idea I've been toying with is to use the >features of the pawn structure (and the king locations) to guide what >the engine should try over the next few moves. The advantage of using >the pawn formation as a trigger or even index into a variety of evaluation >functions, (perhaps dynamically selected by a function pointer at runtime) >is that the information could be stored in the pawn hash table for >easy retrieval. > >As an example, if the center is blocked and white has a preponderance of >force and space on the king side then it may be okay to start a king- >side attack using the white king pawns to break open the black king's >castled location. At the very least moves like g4, h4 should be considered. >This would be especially true if the black queen was trapped on the >queenside and the black's king safety was already weakened. Other >factors would be control of the squares around the enemy king, but the >initial trigger would be the features of the pawn structure. > >Anyway, this is just one example other patterns could be the Stonewall, >the pawn chains that arise out of the French Defence, the Caro-Kan etc. >or even recognizing when a queenside minority attack made sense. > >In fact, I've starting using a variation of this idea in the king safety >routines. >I recently started saving the pawn state of the six squares directly in front >of the king (if a pawn is present then bit is set in an 8-bit index). This >value, once calculated, is used as an index into an array of function >pointers that point to functions tailored for the specific pawn structure >(e.g. if the pawn structure is a fianchetto structure then elements related >to the strength or weakness of the fianchetto bishop etc. are checked). >So far, the results have been encouraging but it needs a lot of tuning and >experimentation. > >Anyway, I was wondering has anyone else here given any of these >ideas a try yet? And if so, how successful have they been? > >regards, >--tom It's a "must"! But most is still on my todo list. I have a lot of bitboard patterns in mind to determine the "finality" of such pawn structures, static and dynamic aspects. Rather than using switch or arrays of function pointers, as i actually do too, i think about vectors of weighting factors, indexed by pawn structure (on several board areas, center and wings), "gamestate" and "king relations"... Cheers, Gerd
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