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Subject: Re: pawn structure, pawn hash, square-of-pawn, pawn-races

Author: Stuart Cracraft

Date: 12:45:29 08/19/04

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On August 19, 2004 at 15:42:05, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On August 19, 2004 at 15:27:56, Stuart Cracraft wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I am looking around for those last few "big-ticket" items
>>to implement in my program and am wondering about these.
>>
>>The program currently knows nothing about pawns other
>>than preference for center pawns and pawns near the friendly
>>castled king.
>>
>>So the question is how much improvement for games vs.
>>normal middle-game position tests do you see coming from
>>the three items square-of-pawn, pawn races, and general
>>pawn structure including passers, isolani, doubled, color
>>complex weakness, etc. as well as implementing a pawn
>>hash. Be detailed. I'm interested in what kind of results
>>before and after you added these that you saw.
>>
>>For example, I once heard one programmer comment that
>>square of pawn was worth a full rating class in competitive play.
>>
>>And how do you implement square-of-pawn and and pawn races
>>and what gotchas did you encounter?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Stuart
>
>Once you get your program tactically sound, you will lose every game you can't
>win tactically, if you don't understand pawn structure.  It is a _huge_ issue.
>
>If you don't understand weak pawns, isolated pawns, doubled pawns, pawn
>majorities, distant majorities, outside/distant passers, etc, IM/GM players will
>have you for lunch...

Well, fortunately the program will never play against anyone stronger
than me and it can whip me now so an IM and GM isn't needed; however,
I'd like to add them anyway (without consulting existing code) in
the hopes that it might raise my own level of play.



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