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Subject: Re: Nunn's K & P suite

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 15:42:50 02/03/00

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On February 03, 2000 at 17:08:37, Amir Ban wrote:

>
>There's an article by Nunn & Friedel in the latest ICCAJ called "Brains of the
>Earth" on a contest to solve 6 very hard king & pawn endings. The article says
>solving this suite in 24 hours was an exceptional achievement, and Kasparov made
>an amazing achievement of solving it in 45 minutes. It's also possible to
>understand from the article that Hiarcs could not solve the set.
>
>So I set up the EPD, intending to let Junior think about it all night, but I was
>surprised to find that Junior (no tablebases) can find all 6 key moves in less
>than 2 minutes each.
>
>Here is the EPD:
>
>6k1/6p1/8/4K1P1/8/7P/8/8 w - - ; bm Kf4;
>k7/4p3/4p3/8/8/3P1P2/5P2/K7 w - - ; bm Kb2;
>8/4p3/2kp4/4p3/6K1/5P2/3P4/8 w - - ; bm Kg5;
>k7/8/1p6/p1p5/2P4K/8/PP6/8 w - - ; bm a4;
>8/8/p7/8/1P6/7p/P4k1P/3K4 w - - ; bm a3;
>8/5p1p/8/6k1/8/6P1/5PP1/7K w - - ; bm Kh2;
>
>I don't quite understand it.

Surely, it is meant to prove the checkmate in each case.  In all cases except
the first (which I believe has an alternate solution) crafty finds the right
answer immediately.  The slowest one was:
8/8/p7/8/1P6/7p/P4k1P/3K4 w - - ; bm a3;
which took 1:32 on a very busy PII 300, but also was closing in on the
checkmate.

So, I think the problem is not to find the key moves but to prove the
checkmates.



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