Author: Peter McKenzie
Date: 21:32:17 11/28/99
The following position is from a blitz game between Hossa and Beadle (LambChop) on ICC: r3q1k1/ppp1rpp1/2n1b2p/8/2P2B2/3B4/PPPQ1RPP/5RK1 w - - Hossa played Bxh6 and wiped Beadle out. This position is an interesting test of king safety evaluation, as there is no short range mate or win of material after the sac although I'm pretty confident the sac is correct. I tried this position with LambChop, and it too liked Bxh6 giving it a score of about +0.5 pawns from depths 4 thru 8. On depths 9-10 it switched to Qc3 with a similar score of around +0.5, then at depth 11 it switched back to Bxh6 and the score jumps to +1.4. Depth 12 is still Bxh6 at +1.6. We discussed this position a bit on ICC, Bob ran it on Crafty which didn't want to play Bxh6. Peter Kappler ran it on Hiarcs which liked Bxh6 straight away with a +1 score! Diep also liked Bxh6 from early on, and had an even higher score. I wonder what Hiarcs and Diep are doing in eval that Crafty isn't... or vice-versa. How about other programs? What do the human chess experts think? If that position is too hard, it might be productive to play down the main line of accepting the sacrifice. So after 1.Bxh6 gxh6 2.Qxh6 we have: r3q1k1/ppp1rp2/2n1b2Q/8/2P5/3B4/PPP2RPP/5RK1 b - - Here LambChop gets a score jump from -0.2 at ply 7 to -1.7 at ply 8. Not quite sure why :-) cheers, Peter
This page took 0.02 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.