Author: Dave Gomboc
Date: 12:16:59 05/13/99
Go up one level in this thread
On May 13, 1999 at 13:38:23, Dann Corbit wrote:
>On May 11, 1999 at 23:42:34, Peter McKenzie wrote:
>[snip]
>>I don't think there are many useful zugzwang positions in the first 15ply. By
>>useful positions, I mean positions that could conceivably be reached in a game
>>and be used to your advantage. In fact, I'm not aware of any - perhaps someone
>>could post some?
>There are about 3e43 possibilities for the first 15 ply {a large number of
>repeats, obviously}. If one position in a sextillion is zugzwang there are
>still more of those positions than I can store on all the hard disks in our
>company. I will bet that there are more zugzwang positions ending in
>*checkmate* in the first 15 ply {not full moves} than you can store on your hard
>drive. [Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?]
>
>It is amazing how rarely tried some combinations are. Who knows how much
>interesting stuff we are missing. Even for the first two plies, about half of
>the 400 possibilities are almost never played.
If you are right, they might well be reached when someone has played very weakly
earlier. I don't mean "of course they played weakly, they are getting
checkmated! :)", I mean they played moves we would not consider playing, manage
to try to hold it together with tactics, and ultimately fail.
Dave
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.