Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 13:34:40 08/04/99
Go up one level in this thread
On August 04, 1999 at 16:24:58, Ricardo Gibert wrote: >I think I figured out what the problem is. > >Consider W: Kf2, Re2, Pa2; B: Kh2. > >Distance to mate will return: >1 Re3 Kh1 2 Rh3# > >Distance to mate or winning pawn move or winning capture will return: >1 a4 Kh3 2 a5 Kg4, etc. > >The pawn move is a 1 mover that leads to a winning position, while the rook move >is a 2 mover to lead to mate. To avoid this idiotic behavior, distance to mate >must be used at the expense of extremely rare positions that will instead of win >due to the 50 move rule. The rest of the program must deal with 3-fold >repetition (easy) and the 50 move rule as best as it can. you say "deal repetition (easy)". I don't see how it is possible, much less easy. Unless the program plays the whole game from start to finish. Because tablebases are positions that say "mate in N moves from this position" and that is a reference to a path of moves that if followed, end up with mate in the number of moves given... But if someone has played some non-optimal moves, this won't work, because between "here" and "mate" lies a whole lot of other positions that have to be stepped over. And it is just possible that one of those positions has already been hit twice before the computer gets a chance to do the lookup. And I don't see _any_ way to repair this. of course, it isn't a problem if the computer plays from the beginning. But the lack of path information from the tablebase hit to the final tablebase mate position is a killer, otherwise...
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