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Subject: Re: Meaningless Underpromotions

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 18:36:39 08/10/99

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On August 10, 1999 at 21:07:53, Alex Boby wrote:

>On August 10, 1999 at 19:56:10, Marc Plum wrote:
>
>>A while back I ran some multiple engine tournaments within the Nimzo99
>>interface.  One thing that I noticed was that some  programs would make
>>meaningless underpromotions.  That is, in a position where a promoted pawn would
>>be immediately exchanged anyway, the computer might promote to a bishop or rook
>>rather than a queen.  I had occasionally encountered the same thing in my own
>>games with computers; I also found a small number of computer games like this
>>when doing a database search for underpromotions.  I don't have any statistics
>>to present; I'm just noting that this happens not infrequently.
>>
>>When a human player does this, he is probably just being whimsical, or it could
>>be a psychological ploy.  I wonder, though, why a computer would do it.  Is it
>>just a random thing?  Does the computer reason that losing a bishop is less bad
>>than losing a queen, even though the resulting position is the same? Or do
>>computers like messing with people's minds too?
>>
>>Marc Plum
>
>   I think it probably just random. Since either of the 4 moves will result in
>exactly the same position and thus exactly the same eval,.. it's probably just a
>matter of what order they're generated in or sorted in.

See my previous post.  the type of promotion can affect the search depth.



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