Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Interesting quiescence position

Author: Anthony Cozzie

Date: 10:51:28 02/21/04

Go up one level in this thread


On February 21, 2004 at 08:44:45, Michel Langeveld wrote:

>On February 21, 2004 at 08:37:50, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On February 21, 2004 at 08:23:59, Andrew Wagner wrote:
>>
>>>The position is [D]r2q1rk1/ppp4p/2n2b2/3bppp1/Q7/P2PBNP1/1P2PPBP/R4RK1 w - - 0 1
>>>
>>>The idea of course is to find Bxg5 Bxg5 Nxg5 Bxg2 (Qxg5 Bxd5) Qh4!(threatening
>>>mate while defending the knight) 1-0
>>>
>>>and I'm sure most engines would find that very easily. The question is a.) Is
>>>this a move quiescence should find, and how? and b.) How do you keep from
>>>pruning this move via SEE or MVVLA if you have them implemented?
>>
>>This move is not a move that qsearch should find because qsearch does not search
>>nothing like that.
>>
>>Qh4 is not a capture or check and qsearch has not enough depth to find threats
>>of mate in 1.
>>
>>Even after Qh4 programs should not evaluate the position as better for white by
>>qsearch because black is a piece up for a pawn and the black king is not in
>>check so by stand pat programs return beta and programs need to search at least
>>one ply more in the main search to find the mate(it may be even more than one
>>ply more because after Bxf1 your program may prune Qxh7# as a capture that is
>>not good enough to get the score above beta and even after Bxf1 Qxh7# if your
>>program does not evaluate mates it may not see the mate and need another ply to
>>see that the king is captured).
>>
>>Note that in the case of movei I think that one ply after Qh4 is enough because
>>it prunes no captures in the first ply of the qsearch and finding if the
>>position is mate is part of the evaluation.
>>
>>Uri
>
>I spoke with Andrew about this in ICC and said something similiair.
>Not a normal task for QSearch to pick this up.
>
>But on the other hand if you think about it if an engine is capable to find Qh4
>in a cheap way then this engine is in on the right path to become a tactical
>monster.
>
>[D]r2q1rk1/ppp4p/2n5/4ppN1/Q7/P2P2P1/1P2PPbP/R4RK1 w - -
>In this position a queen on h7 is mate. All moves that makes it possible to get
>a queen on h7 are interesting. With this reasoning Qh4 can be found.

I don't think *anyone* does _mate threats_ in qsearch, let alone mate threats at
all depths in qsearch.

This is an 8 ply combination for Zappa.  Seeing tactics of this magnitude is
simply not the job for the q-search.  If you bulked up your q-search enough to
find this, you would get 6 ply brute-force at 40/2.

anthony



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.