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Subject: Re: detecting and evaluating pins

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 08:14:28 02/23/04

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On February 23, 2004 at 07:02:59, martin fierz wrote:

>aloha,
>
>i have a question about pins. pins are a rather important feature in chess; some
>of them are not so bad, some are deadly. i just happened to chat briefly with
>anthony cozzie on ICC, and he said he didn't do any pin detection. i detect
>pins, but i don't evaluate whether a pin is not so bad or deadly. my questions
>are:
>-> are you detecting pins in your program?
>-> if yes, do you try to distinguish between different pins?

No and No.  I don't do it as I have not found it very important.  IE with the
depth I hit today, if a pin is important, the search can go deeply enough to
discover this without much trouble.  20 years ago I was definitely evaluating
pins, as hitting 5-6-7 plies is not deep enough to see the consequences of a
pin, whereas todays 12-16 plies in longer games is more than enough in most
cases.

There are exceptions, but the question has to be "is the cost of doing this
offset by the playing strength increase?"  I believe that at least for my
program, the answer is "no".

YMMV of course.

>
>cheers
>  martin



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