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Subject: Re: Stupid chess programs!!! And that goes for most of them!

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 14:40:40 12/15/99

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On December 15, 1999 at 11:44:52, Torstein Hall wrote:

>Take the following position and setup on your PC:
>
>4b3/1r4k1/p3pr2/1p1pPp2/PPpP1Pp1/2P3Pp/K6P/8 w - - 0 1
>
>Every human would play 1.a5 without thinking, but your chessprogram plays
>1.exf6+??? It may be wrong to call a program stupid but.....
>
>Torstein
>
>( So far I have only tried it on Fritz 6 and Hiarcs 7.32 )

This class of problem is very old, and is designed to exhibit worst-case
behavior in chess programs by exercising an extremely uncommon special case.

All it proves is that humans can generalize better than computers in this case.
That indicates a failure for chess software in an AI sense, but doesn't
necessarily indicate a failure in terms of chess strength.

If you want to find a position where programs will outperform humans, just go to
a book of mate in N chess problems like those composed by Sam Lloyd.  Those
problems are attractive to humans because they tax the human ability to
generalize.

But a computer would not find them interesting.

bruce



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