Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Mates in x -- what is the limit?

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 01:39:08 02/17/99

Go up one level in this thread



On February 16, 1999 at 20:18:41, Dann Corbit wrote:

>Now that so many large tablebase files are available, does anyone know how far
>out the farthest "certain" mate is?

I don't think that anybody is listening to your actual question so far.

The furthest mate known might not be an endgame database mate.  People have
created very strange problems with huge distances to mate.  I don't know if
these have been verified by computer, but humans are capable of doing very
accurate work in this regard.

But assuming it is, there are some positions in some 6-man endings that take
more than 200 moves to convert, which means that you can simplify into a
sub-game that's also won in that number of moves.

Which is also not answering your question, but it at least tells you that the
answer is provably in excess of 200 moves.

These endings would be drawn by the 50-move rule according to FIDE.

bruce



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.