Author: Ian Osgood
Date: 12:05:09 01/07/00
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On January 07, 2000 at 13:47:21, Dann Corbit wrote: >On January 07, 2000 at 13:43:09, Ian Osgood wrote: > >>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. > >Heiner Marxen's Chest program also solves helpmates (and many other sorts of >chess problems as well). Comes with source. Worth a look. > >UNIX version: >http://www.drb.insel.de/~heiner/Chess/chest.html > >Win32 version: >ftp://38.168.214.175/pub/chest/ > >It is (by an overwhelming landslide) the best chess problem solver on earth. Thank you very much, for the link and for the Windows port! This is an ideal starting point for me. Do you know much about the technology used in Chest? Which source would I modify to restrict a helpmate solution condition even further (NxR at move 5)? IanO
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