Asri-unix.142
net.chess
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!mclure
Wed Nov 25 14:46:07 1981
BELLE and endgame problems
Here are two endgame problems I gave to Ken Thompson, co-author of world
computer champion BELLE, at the recent ACM tournament. I was interested
to see if BELLE could make any headway with them. It solved both easily!
The first took 2 1/2 minutes to pick the right move for the right reason.
The second took 22 seconds. BELLE required a 16 ply search for the first
and a 24 ply search for the second. I was amazed at its processing speed.
Also, transposition tables help a lot in these sorts of endgames. I believe
the first is a famous Reti problem.

-- ** -- WK -- ** -- **         White to draw
** -- ** -- ** -- ** BP         1 Kc8 Kc6 2 Kb8 Kb5 3 Kb7 Ka5 4 Kc6 h5
-- ** -- BK -- ** -- **         5 Kd5 h4 6 Ke4 h3 7 Kf3 h2 8 g2 h1Q 9 Kh1
WP -- ** -- ** -- ** --
-- ** -- ** -- ** -- **
** -- ** -- ** -- ** --
-- ** -- ** -- ** -- **
** -- ** -- ** -- ** --

-- ** -- ** -- BK -- **         White to win
** -- ** -- ** -- ** --         1 Kc2 Ke7 2 Kb3 Kd6 3 Kb4 Kc6 4 Kc4 Kd6
-- ** -- ** -- ** -- **         5 Kb5 Kc7 6 Kc5 Kd7 7 Kb6 Kc8 8 Kc6 Kd8
** -- ** -- ** -- ** --         9 c4 Kc8 10 c5 Kd8 11 Kb7 Kd7 12 c6 Kd6
-- ** -- ** -- ** -- **         13 c7 Kd5 14 c8
** -- WP -- ** -- ** --
-- ** -- ** -- ** -- **
** -- ** WK ** -- ** --

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