Author: Ian Osgood
Date: 10:43:09 01/07/00
Here is a little jaunt away from the same old alpha-beta/tablebase discussions: There was a recent posting about a helpmate problem composed by Nunn which stumped Karpov & Kasparov. The problem: White has moved 1.e4. Come up with a line which results in 5.NxR checkmate. You must determine whether this is White's or Black's fifth move. I have been thinking about how to solve this problem on a computer. Since it is a help mate with a very specific end condition, I would think a standard alpha-beta search with a positional eval wouldn't work. First of all, the eval or search should detect the end condition at the appropriate plies. Second, the search should be full width, or prune based on problem specific info (for instance, can a knight reach the king to deliver the mate on time). I would think a hash table would help to speed up any full width search. Since we are searching for a specific condition, perhaps a different search method such as proof-number search would be more appropriate. Does anyone have any experience writing helpmate solvers? Anyone have any other ideas about solving Nunn's problem? Also, I am looking for public source code for Proof-Number searching. Thanks, IanO
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