Author: h.g.muller
Date: 05:13:27 02/09/06
Go up one level in this thread
On February 09, 2006 at 07:24:29, Joseph Tadeusz wrote: >Perhaps only two kings on the board is less of a draw than stalemate? You hit upon an interesting pronblem of TB play: for positions in the draw sector the program hasn't the slightest idea what to play (except avoiding losing moves). Where for a human there are draws that you are happy with to salvage and draws that you couldn't win by a hair's breadth, the TB simply does not make that distinction. So a TB-driven engine in a drawn KbppKb game with unlike bishops would see nothing strange in sacrificing one pawn on the first move, a second pawn on the second move, and its bishop on the third move. KKb is still a draw, so why the fuss? Of course in KKb there is absolutely no hope left for a swindle, while if the opponent did not have the KbppKb TB he might have conceivably made a mistake... This problem is not so easy to solve, because to maximize the probablilty to seduce the opponent to a losing error requires knowledge on which type of errors he is likely to make. The obvious method of keeping the number of non-losing moves as small as possible would only work against an opponent that plays the moves randomly. In practice it leads to quick conversion, because if I capture his Rook in, say, KrpKr, only the single move that recaptures the Rook is non-losing. But in practice it is of course inconceivable he would refrain from recapturing the Rook, so the result is certain conversion to a drawn KpK end-game that is so trivial that he can not possibly bungle it, even if he does not have that TB...
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