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Subject: Analysis, fortress draws, and hash tables

Author: Robin Smith

Date: 20:23:00 08/07/04


Fortress draws have been the Achilles heel of programs for years, and probably
will be for years to come. This weakness will be very hard for programmers to
rectify. But it occurs to me that for analysis (not playing), this and other
program weaknesses could be partially corrected. If for specific positions human
evaluations could entered and stored in hash tables, with some kind of don't
erase this position or evaluation flag, the strengths of humans and computers
could be more readily combined.

For example, in a post below, Uri analysed the following postion:

[D]3r2rk/3n1pp1/2p1b2p/3q3P/pp1PNQ2/2P2P2/PP6/KB4RR w - - 0 29

Uri's analysis went 29.Rg6 fxg6 30.hxg6 Rge8 31.Rxh6+ Kg8 32.Rh7 Bf5 33.Qh4 Bxg6
34.c4 Bxh7 35.cxd5 Bxe4 36.Bxe4 Nf6 37.Bg6 cxd5 38.Bxe8 Rxe8

[D]4r1k1/6p1/5n2/3p4/pp1P3Q/5P2/PP6/K7 w - - 0 39

Here, while computers see a large advantage, a human can spot the possibility of
a fortress, could verify the fortress does indeed hold, and then enter this
position's evaluation as 0.00. Then backing up from here, this info could be
retained in hash tables, and a program could quickly spot the improvement for
White: 36.fxe4 cxd5 37.e5 I don't think any commercial programs allow what I am
talking about, but perhaps one of the freeware engines does? And if not, how
difficult would it be to add such a feature, for analysis? It would be very
powerful.

-Robin






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