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Subject: Re: A question about underpromotion danger

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 11:40:31 08/04/99

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On August 04, 1999 at 14:09:18, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>
>On August 04, 1999 at 12:16:52, Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>>As a 'for instance':
>>
>>Suppose that on promotion, a program sees that it can promote to a knight
>>instead of a queen, and get a king fork, taking a bishop, followed by a queen
>>fork, taking the other bishop.  In such a case, it might evaluate:
>>   -pawn+knight+bishop+bishop+two_bishop_bonus+(minor positional goo)
>>verses
>>   -pawn+queen
>>and get something a fraction more valuable than a queen.  But down the road I
>>would rather have the queen than a knight and remove the two bishops.
>>
>>How do programs deal with this?
>
>You are really saying you'd rather have a queen against two bishops than be a
>knight up, right?
>
>bruce

Actually, assuming an equal game, it is a preference of being up a queen for a
pawn as opposed to being up a knight and two bishops for a pawn.

Of course, decisions like these are always based off of the actual position, but
here is a comment Kasparov made just the other day on Ponomariov - Al Modiakhi
in round 1 of the championship:

"Looking at Ponomariov's 7.Be3 with 8.Bb6 I have sensed chess of the very
distant future. With my limited knowledge of the game I would consider 3 minor
pieces in such position much better than Queen+pawn".

So, there are obviously positions where having 3 minors is better than having
the queen.

KarinsDad :)



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