4 ms·
I am skeptical about the idea of starting with king, bishop and knight versus king. Winning this endgame from an arbitrary start position requires something lik
by billforsternz 6y ago
I am skeptical about the idea of starting with king, bishop and knight versus king. Winning this endgame from an arbitrary start position requires something like 25 moves / 50 ply. Brute force minimax plus alpha beta will struggle to do that in a reasonable amount of time without sophisticated pruning. And you can't progress gently to the goal starting with simple 2 or 3 ply calculations because mate is the only point of the calculation here, normal material and positional factors are irrelevant. It makes more sense to first make sure your engine can win material with a simple knight fork say, and build from there to multi move material winning combinations. Followed by pursuit of positional goals when material gain is impossible (control the centre, seek scope for the pieces etc.). The elementary mates are actually a problem area for engines because they require a rather atypical strategical approach, cutting off the king, bringing your king around, shrinking the box, eventually forcing mate.
- jacquesm 6y agoI meant that example as the end stage of when the training wheels can come off. Before that, of course, you start with even simpler examples, king + knight vs king would be the best starting point.
- billforsternz 6y agoI don't understand your point. King plus knight v King is completely pointless, no move for either side is any better than any other. In fact the game should simply be declared a draw and no more moves should be played. What possible value does it have? Test the ability to generate legal moves maybe?
- Nemerie 6y agoI guess the GP meant queen, not knight.
- billforsternz 6y agoHadn't thought of that. Amusingly the classic chess algorithms even fail to mate with Q+K v K for reasons I discuss up thread. Eg Sargon 1978 version can't do it. It's basically a terrible idea however you slice it because these mates are a special skill, almost like a different game with different ideas to the rest of chess.