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Subject: Re: Why do programs have such a hard time with pawn promotion threats?

Author: José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba

Date: 10:14:13 08/05/99

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On August 04, 1999 at 19:03:25, Pete R. wrote:

>On August 04, 1999 at 14:57:02, José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba wrote:
>
>>On August 03, 1999 at 21:29:14, Pete R. wrote:
>>
>>>Currently in the Kasparov vs. The World correspondence game there are a number
>>>of endgames that involve races between passed pawns on either side of the board.
>>>While the programs have been quite useful so far, they aren't too swift in the
>>>transition to the endgame when passed pawns are the issue.  Where a human player
>>>would push his passed pawn at every opportunity, the programs tend to diddle
>>>around moving pieces, until the pawn is almost promoted, when they suddenly
>>>realize that one side is winning. For example in the following position,
>>>
>>>8/1p1kp2Q/2np4/1p2bpB1/8/3q3P/5PP1/5RK1 w - -
>>>
>>>I ran Fritz 5.32, Hiarcs 7.32, and Crafty 16.12 for many hours, enough to get to
>>>18 ply for Fritz and Crafty.  All of them recommend the move g4 for white
>>>(Crafty switches to g4 at 15+ ply), which gets buried by b4!.  For example,
>>>
>>>27. g4 b4
>>>28. Qxf5 Qxf5
>>>29. gxf5 b3
>>>30. Rb1 b2
>>>31. Kf1 Na5
>>>
>>>and by now they will realize that white is losing.  There are a number of
>>>possible endgames coming up involving a race between white's passed h pawn and
>>>black's passed b pawn, and the programs have a real hard time with it.  What's
>>>going on here?
>>
>>	I recommend to use crafty 16.15 with 'extension pushpp 1.0' for this and
>>similar positions, it will extend more aggresively on passed pawn advances (the
>>default is 0.75), and will see the dangers at shallowers depths.
>>	I can not do it myself because I do not have "many" hours of computer time
>>available.
>>José.
>
>Thanks, I'll play with these new parameters.  I think the ppscale might be the
>one to use vs. the extension, but I'll have to fiddle with it.

	Yes, increasing 'evaluation ppscale' can also help. Values over 200 are not
recommended (the default is 100). I love these features of crafty.



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