Author: Andrew Williams
Date: 02:53:29 04/03/04
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On April 02, 2004 at 18:47:34, Eric Oldre wrote: >Hi everyone, >I've been working on my new chess engine for a few weeks now and am pretty happy >with the progress i've made so far. I'm even going to try entering it into >Olivier Deville's ChessWar tournament next week. I've set the lofty goal for >myself of not taking last place. I give myself a 50/50 shot of reaching it. > >I've been playing it against some engines here at home and noticed a trend in >it's play. It seems to do OK in the middle game, but about the time it get down >to having some pawns and 2 minors/rooks it's game starts to fall apart. > >At this point t is usually about even or sometimes up in material (not against >any "elite" engines of course, and i don't see any major weaknesses in it's >position, but the opponent either chips away at it's pawns, or gets a promotion. >or just mates it. The point is that i don't see any one specific thing that it >isn't catching. > >One thing is that i don't have any special endgame evaluation changes. I plan on >making it so that it starts to value the king in the center instead of behind >it's pawns. but i don't think that alone will make the difference. > >So my question is: what suggestions do you have for ways could i improve it's >play during the endgame, or would i call it the "middle-endgame" at that point? > >Thanks, >Eric Oldre You're right about centralizing the King. Also think about identifying and rewarding passed pawns. Don't go too mad with this, but your program should know that a passer is good and gets better the closer to promotion it gets. You might also consider giving passers a bigger bonus when the opponent has very little material. Good luck. Andrew
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