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Subject: Re: Study = Ernest Pogosyants, 1973 = White to play and win [5. Qg8+!!]

Author: F. Huber

Date: 07:15:06 01/07/05

Go up one level in this thread


On January 07, 2005 at 09:37:55, Heiner Marxen wrote:

>On January 06, 2005 at 12:59:29, F. Huber wrote:
>
>>On January 06, 2005 at 12:20:13, Heiner Marxen wrote:
>>
>>>On January 05, 2005 at 16:15:22, F. Huber wrote:
>>>
>>>>On January 05, 2005 at 14:02:58, Richard Pijl wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On January 05, 2005 at 13:47:09, Kurt Utzinger wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Much too easy for any chess program I think. Or can you find
>>>>>>a modern engine being unable to solve this within 0 to some seconds?
>>>>>>Kurt
>>>>>
>>>>>I only tried a few, and all were able to solve it in 1 second or less on my
>>>>>machine.
>>>>>Now a question for the mate-solvers: Is this a mate in 20, or can a faster mate
>>>>>be found?
>>>>>Richard.
>>>>
>>>>Hi Richard,
>>>>
>>>>I´ve tried it now in brute-force mode with ´Gustav 3.0´ up to depth 13, but
>>>>with a branching factor of about 2.5 it would take too long, if it´s really
>>>>a mate in 20 (so at least it´s above 13).
>>>>Chest (also in brute force) is much slower for this position ...
>>>>
>>>>Of course all this is _without_ any EGTBs, since both programs don´t support
>>>>them - although: Heiner Marxens private development version of Chest seems to
>>>>already have implemented it, so maybe Heiner could try this problem.
>>>
>>>Hello Franz,
>>>
>>>I've started it on my Athlon 1500+ with all 3&4 piece TBs, and very few 5-piece
>>>TBs.  Depth 12 needs a minute and shows a factor around 3 between depths,
>>>so I'm not sure this has any hope.
>>>
>>>Which 5-piece tables would be most useful here?
>>>I could try to get some more...
>>>[depth 13: 244 secs, factor 3.79... :-( ]
>>
>>Hello Heiner,
>>
>>I´m not absolutely sure, but I´d guess KNPKP would be the best one (since
>>white can quite simply force it to remove both queens and win the black knight).
>
>I tried to download that one, but failed.  Bob's site currently is out of order
>and the European mirror I tried (ftp://145.94.41.27/Crafty/TB/32p/)
>does provide not much more than 4KB/s, and after 17 MB the connection froze
>completely.
>
>Just now I have:
>FEN: 6k1/5Np1/4n3/2Qq2PK/8/8/8/8 w - -
>analysing (mate in 20 moves):
>#  1      0.00s                 0kN           0.87          1-         0
>#  2      0.00s                 0kN           1.00          1-         0
>#  3      0.00s                 0kN [  5.20]  0.92         30-         0
>% EGTB found tables for max 5 pieces
>% EGTB uses 3728.4K memory internally
>#  4      0.02s                 0kN [  3.67]  1.07        117-         0
>#  5      0.02s [  1.00]        2kN [  3.82]  1.51        317-         0
>#  6      0.07s [  3.50]       11kN [  6.22]  1.82       1444-         0
>#  7      0.23s [  3.29]       51kN [  4.51]  2.34       5591-         0
>#  8      0.94s [  4.09]      243kN [  4.76]  2.90      22069-         0
>#  9      3.07s [  3.27]      726kN [  2.98]  3.31      70315-         0
># 10      6.83s [  2.22]     1559kN [  2.15]  4.02     155844-         1
># 11     20.39s [  2.99]     4502kN [  2.89]  4.74     429776-        12
># 12     64.43s [  3.16]    13345kN [  2.96]  6.58    1143927-      2685
># 13    244.35s [  3.79]    48544kN [  3.64]  8.60    3750376-   1285851
># 14    889.90s [  3.64]   179343kN [  3.69]  9.96   13432518-  10933117
># 15   3422.06s [  3.85]   670844kN [  3.74] 12.51   47288122-  44788721
># 16  14485.35s [  4.23]  2862927kN [  4.27] 12.36  193945070- 191445669
># 17  59920.91s [  4.14] 12006250kN [  4.19] 12.45  801825148- 799325747
>
>>Of course 6-men TBs would be still better, but probably they are not supported
>>yet in your current version. (?)
>>But IMO this is much more a position for a normal chess engine (and EGTBs) than
>>for a mate solver, and (again only IMO) I don´t really see the need of EGTB-
>>support in a mate solver at all - there are much too little positions which
>>would profit by it, but OTH it will probably slowdown the search.
>>
>>What´s really surprising with this position, is that Chest is much slower than
>>Gustav here (which is absolutely not usual!), and furthermore that the branching
>>factor in Chest is significantly higher than that of Gustav (being about 2.5)!?
>
>Obviously, the branching factor causes the slowness (not vice versa).
>And Chest's worse branching factor most probably is due to its selection
>of defender moves.  While Chest is not naive about this, it is far from
>perfect, and sometimes a bit of "luck" is involved, also.
>
>For a more detailed explanation we had to compare the search trees of
>Chest and Gustav in more detail.
>
>But when Gustav's branching factor here is as good as 2.5 there should
>be a good chance to have Gustav complete depth 20, right?  Have you tried?

Hello Heiner,

no, I didn´t try it - if you remember, I´m usually working on a slow Celeron/400
and it needed already 3 1/2 min to finish depth 13!
So if I extrapolate the factor 2.5 for another 7 moves, this will take about
1 1/2 days - I doubt my more than 5 years old notebook will bear this torture!
:-(

Sorry that you had no luck with this KNPKP file, but since I´m quite sure that
this position is indeed only a mate in 20, I´d guess that even this file won´t
be of much use for a brute force search - if there really exists a shorter mate,
then certainly not with only those 5 pieces.

But I think this special position isn´t really interesting for mate solving,
so we shouldn´t waste more of our time with it ... ;-)

Regards,
Franz.



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