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Subject: Re: Zappa endgame bug

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 08:59:58 08/24/05

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On August 24, 2005 at 11:14:48, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On August 24, 2005 at 03:05:25, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On August 24, 2005 at 01:23:26, Majd Al-Ansari wrote:
>>
>>>A human will immediately assess that black has a passed pawn on kingside so his
>>>own passed pawn on queenside cannot be supported by the king .... therefore an
>>>obvious draw without any calculation needed.
>>
>>I think that you overestimate humans.
>>I was not talking about the top humans but about the big majority of humans who
>>play in tournaments.
>>
>>Of course humans can see that black cannot support the passed pawns by the king
>>after some thinking but not immediately.
>
>Sorry, but I disagree here.  But then I have worked on this exact code in Crafty
>many times.  I don't even have to think about the king-side majority that
>becomes a passed pawn.  So when I saw the position, my only question was "can
>black do anything on the queenside without the king, because the king has to
>restrain white's passed pawn on the kingside.
>
>After looking for a few seconds, I thought "no".  So now it does become some
>calculation to see if either can win when both have passers on opposite wings.
>Since white's king is positioned OK, didn't take me much to come up with
>"draw"...

I know that basically 2 pawns cannot win without the king but I also know
basically that with 2 pawn advantage in pawn endgame you can win and when you
have 2 passed pawns and the oponnent only has pawn majority it seems to me
thatit probably a win for the side with 2 passed pawns.

Only after thinking about it I see that the king cannot support the pawns.

pawn majority of 2 against 1 is not something that I am afraid of based on
experience and here is an example

[D]8/8/pk4pp/8/PP5K/8/8/8 w - - 0 1

pawn majority does not help white and note that black has only one pawn
advantage and not 2 pawn advantage.

Uri



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