Author: Roy Brunjes
Date: 06:48:08 03/02/04
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On March 02, 2004 at 09:06:01, Geert van der Wulp wrote: >Hi to all, > >Yesterday eve I held a match between Fritz 7 and Crafty 19.10. It came to a >(completely drawn endgame) with Bishops of opposite colors, and 4 pawns each. >Both also had 1 doubled pawn. > >If any of the two Kings abandonned his pawns, then at least one of them would be >grabbed. The pawns were all blocking each other. (I deleted the game >unfortunately). None of the two programs had a real plan, but Fritz did not see >the equality of the position. > >Crafty's evaluation changed from +0.15 (advantage to Fritz) to 0.00 in a few >moves. Fritz however continued to believe that it was better with +0.50 (for no >particular reason as far as I could see) and wanted to continue the play, even >though he had no plan at all. He just wanted to walk around in circles with his >King, and move his Bishop around the board aimlessly. > >Why was Crafty able to see that there was no way to win, whereas Fritz did not >seem to have a clue? > >Regards, > >Geert Without a specific position to see, of course it is difficult to say much specifically about either Fritz 7 or Crafty 19.10. I can say however that I have seen similar situations in my analyses of various endgames. I speculate that Bob Hyatt has spent significant effort in improving Crafty's play in at least some endgames. It seems to have resulted in a program that is better than some commercial engines at spotting drawn endings rather quickly. For this reason, Crafty 19.11 is a constant analysis partner of mine in endgame situations. Do I believe Crafty 19.xx is stronger than any of the commercial engines? Not overall, no. Is it strong enough that it can show me things I have overlooked in my analysis? Absolutely, though to be fair, I am not a strong player. Is it strong enough to spot things that GMs have overlooked in their analysis? Many times, yes. Not bad at all for free! Roy
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