Author: Dan Homan
Date: 13:35:27 03/01/99
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On March 01, 1999 at 16:15:05, Stuart Cracraft wrote: >On March 01, 1999 at 15:25:45, Will Singleton wrote: > >> >>On March 01, 1999 at 13:28:50, Stuart Cracraft wrote: >> >>>Hi, >>> >>>I'm curious what kinds of things people have for evaluating king safety. >>> >>>Yes I've looked at Crafty but am more interested now in a variety of >>>people's viewpoints on KING SAFETY. >>> >>>Stuart >> >>Mine isn't anything to shout about, but it's a lot better than it used to be. I >>used to fall for just about any kside attack a good player could come up with; >>now that occurs more rarely. >> >>I talked with Dan Homan about this some time ago, and he shared some ideas about >>his methods. I've modified the approach since then to fit the way my program >>works. Basically, I just compute two things: how much is the king being >>threatened, and how much do I care about it. That is, if my king is >>well-protected, should I care if the opponent has a couple pieces nearby? >>Certainly not as much as when my king has a pawn missing and no defensive pieces >>around. >> >>So I just multiply the threat by the "do I care" factor, and that seems to work >>pretty well. It was difficult to balance the numbers (attacker vs defender), >>resulting in my program throwing pieces at the enemy sometimes. But I do it >>asymetrically now, and most times it works. >> >>Will > >And how do you compute "how much the king is being threatened" and How many pieces from the other side are nearby? Which pieces and how close? Do you have an open files next to the king? Are there Rooks on any such open files? >"how much you care" ? Is the king protected by a complete/partial/no pawn shield? Are other of your pieces nearby to help in case there is trouble? And anything else you can think of.... This stuff is all pretty crude, but it is easy to calculate. (The exact details will, of course, depend on the particulars of your program.) The main thing is that it seems to work most of the time. My program uses a combination of static scores for obvious vulnerabilities that I would like to avoid in general and some of these "how much do I care"*"how much the king is being threatened" terms that can alert me to more dynamic dangers. - Dan
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