Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:07:51 10/04/99
Go up one level in this thread
On October 04, 1999 at 11:43:47, Ricardo Gibert wrote: > >But what about the example of a drawing sac? Why leave that one out? >Technically, mate (mate is really misnomer) is a "forced concession of the >battle", you don't actually kill the king. That's why we have a complicated >mating rule. It would be simpler to just capture the K, but the inventers wanted >to keep the game "polite" and leave the really _fun_ part out. Perhaps, because >the game was actually anticipated to be played by real kings, they decided it >was "wiser" to leave the last grisly detail out. Killing a king is not really >fun when a _real_ king can really kill you in return. But this not _my_ reason >for calling it a sac. It is a sac when I give something up and I don't collect >the material back, either because of mate or a forced draw or whatever (=your >version?). Being "prevented" from getting the material back, because an opponent >resigns or draw is agreed, does not count of course. > I didn't leave the draw option out. It is _identical_ to the mate situation. A program plays a move, and discovers that it can checkmate you no matter what you can do. Is that a sac? A program is behind (losing to you) and discovers that if it makes a move it can force a repetition no matter what you can do. Is that move a sac? Or is it suddenly unimportant since it starts a forced combination that ends the game forcefully, whether winning or drawing? That is the ambiguity I don't like in the general use of the word "sac". "sacrifice" means to give up something. I am not giving up something if I mate you in the process... I am getting back more than I gave up many times over. Ditto for drawing if I am in a losing position... > >By my way of looking at things, a mating combination may or may not include a >sac. I prefer to keep the distinction, rather than meld them together as you do. >People enjoy the sac version of a combo more. Reason enough to keep the >distinction IMHO. Doesn't bother me... if we agree that the definition of a 'sacrifice' is to give up material at some point, whether you get it back or not... The only problem with that definition is that in computer games (particularly those against humans) it happens so often that it becomes a bland happening. I see such 'sacrifices' (combinations) in most every game against a human played at blitz time controls... >Definitions are fairly arbitrary. I choose an objective >definition that can be applied by anyone. You choose one that is subjective. >Taking the Rebel game as an example. If a 1200 played that "sac" it would be a >true sac, since he cannot reasonably be expected to calculate all the >ramifications. If a GM plays the sac, maybe it is a sac or not, depending on the >player, time situation, etc. A GM could calculate it to the point where he gets >the material back or play it based on intuition. I don't care for this >ambiguity. > Not a problem for me either way. If the word must stay totally ambiguous, I can live with it... But a sac from a GM and a sac from a program are two totally different concepts. Because a program will _never_ do it 'just because it feels right' while a GM will do it regularly for that reason, without being able to calculate all the repercussions...
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