Technically at the end of it I’m up one piece, but the obvious next move will put us back even. What am I missing?
I’d be lying if I said I understand this problem, and indeed the players during the game eventually agreed to a draw, they didn’t either.
But white can easily make a third king while red is stuck with two so there is a material edge. The winning plan is apparently to play with three kings again two until red is forced to come forward with from 5 to 9 to 13. At that point one white king on 22 holds both checkers and then white can extract the checker on 30 and win.
But it takes the engine quite a lot of work to find the win. If I give it 2 seconds per move it eventually gets stuck going back and forth with a big edge but no way to make progress. 10 seconds per move and the 7 piece end game database seem to be enough to find the win.
I don’t understand it, I’m not nearly good enough. But the engine finds a win eventually.
The problem should probably continue for MANY more moves and be impossible for all but the best players. I’ll mark the problem as ending too soon and see if the next generation problem generator does better. But that generator won’t even be started for a while.
I’ve decided to disable 640 and it’s successors 641, 642, and 643.
The engine isn’t wrong but I think you’re right, it’s not very instructive or satisfying. If a stronger checkers player happens upon this thread and wants me to reinstate them I can do so but I think they’re just confusing.
Regards,
Brooks.
it’s a draw , check -checkerboard: cake 1.85-
Hmm, odd. I only have the 7 piece database but on my computer if I let kingsrow play it out it from the position at the end of 640, white wins. Does the 10 piece database help red hold the draw? Or does it choose a different defense during the problem?
I checked it with the 10 piece and it is a win. The problem is there are multiple ways that Red might want to try and defend the position, so it is debatable on which way is to be considered the more challenging. The way Red defends in this particular continuation forces a long win where White has to get a king majority and hold the 2 Red pieces on the side.
1 Like
Thank you both jksf and bazkitcase for the help. I think I’ll leave this puzzle disabled as the endgame it leads to is more instructive than the puzzle itself. Some day I hope there will be an endgame section for things like this.
1 Like