"Stupid winning moves"

[drahacikfm]

When I finish a problem I often go back and look at the computer analysis shown to Gold members to see what other winning moves there were (the "good move" alternates).

There's an interesting thing that I've never seen mentioned in any books on tactics, and something which you only see because of the computer analysis:  Stupid Winning Moves.

This means a move which is winning, but no human would ever play it because it's stupid and he had something much better.  For example, you have a mate in 2 which you could play immediately.  But instead, you attack some piece on another part of the board which is completely unrelated to the mate.  The opponent has to make a move that stops the mate, and then you take that other piece.  Any human who saw the mate would just do the mate, and not attack some completely unrelated piece somewhere else on the board.

Two examples are: 54909 where Black has a mate in 3 with 1...Rh1+, but instead hangs his other rook with 1...Rc8 and attacks the opponent's queen, and wins it because the opponent has to stop the mate.  47164 where Black has a mate in 2 with 1...Qd3+, but instead moves his knight 1...Nh7 to a place where it can be taken for free and where it attacks the opponent's knight.

These "stupid winning moves" only win because the player still has the main threat that he could have played immediately, but instead he added another lesser threat to the position.  Ideally these moves should fail the problem instead of being alternate good moves.  But I don't see any way that a computer can know if a winning move is "stupid" or not.

[uri blass]

When I was a child there were cases when I clearly played stupid winning moves and I also saw other humans player do it.

1)In one case there was mate that I could play but I decided to allow my opponent to promote a pawn to queen and enjoy some material advantage before making the mate instead of mating him earlier.

2)In another case in some friendly game I saw that black had a bishop and knight advantage but white did not resign(both had some pawns).

I was joking that maybe white hopes that black does not know to win KBN vs K
so he can trade all the pieces and draw.

Black responded that he knows how to do it and he is going to prove it.
Black promoted a pawn to a queen and tried to sacrifice the queen but his opponent did not capture the queen and I said that probably black needs to force white to capture the queen.

Black was ready to do it but suddenly white resigned and explain the fact that he resigned when he said that he can see mate in 1.

Note that it was clear to the spectators that black had no intention to play the move that mates in 1.

3)People asked IM Ofer Bruk who is known as a positional player if he sacrificed a queen in his games.

His reply was that in one game he sacrificed 5 queens(not sure if the number 5 is correct but it is not the point).
He said that in case of sacrificing another rook it could be a draw but he was careful not to sacrifice another rook.

Uri

[sourire]

1)In one case there was mate that I could play but I decided to allow my opponent to promote a pawn to queen and enjoy some material advantage before making the mate instead of mating him earlier.

3)People asked IM Ofer Bruk who is known as a positional player if he sacrificed a queen in his games.

His reply was that in one game he sacrificed 5 queens(not sure if the number 5 is correct but it is not the point).
He said that in case of sacrificing another rook it could be a draw but he was careful not to sacrifice another rook.

Uri

To 1.

Please don't think I'm judging you Uri because I'm not, it's just a debatable point. To me, that is unsportsmanship. If an opponent sees a 100% clear win, I expect him to take it. I don't want to be sand bagged in a chess game.

To 3.

I haven't ever heard this history of IM Bruk and his Queen sacrifices. But if sacrificing the Queen produced a win and sacrificing the Rook only produced a draw, this doesn't sound like it helps your argument in the least. It sounds like he was doing the best he could to win.

As to Drahacikfm's post.

I have noticed some moves like that.  What bothers me more, though, is when a particular problem has a mate in 2 solution and an alternate ~7.00+ line that gives the user another chance, but if the user solved for a mate in 6 it's just completely wrong.

It would be better to take away that alternate line not leading to mate in my opinion (also in your 2 examples).

[richard]

Hi All,

The problem Drahacik mentions is certainly a tricky one to solve automatically (at least off the top of my head). I'm not that concerned about it for now as it doesn't allow the user to get advantage and doesn't seem to disadvantage the user either (although it does make the 'good move' advice a bit inaccurate :-)  ).

The +7 versus mate in 6 is something I hope to do something about, but I'm awaiting a generator code cleanup to do so.  The code has become needlessly messy in that area and is further complicated by the client side doing some alternative granting at problem serving time (to essentially patch some general bugs in the generated problems without doing an entire generator verfication re-run).  I'm still surprised I haven't got any takers on the "Possible New Treatment for Alternatives" threat, everyone seems to want to keep things the same as they are, note that the proposal there would at least make the +7 versus mate in 6 consistent by having them both as alternatives.

Richard.

[uri blass]

1)In one case there was mate that I could play but I decided to allow my opponent to promote a pawn to queen and enjoy some material advantage before making the mate instead of mating him earlier.

3)People asked IM Ofer Bruk who is known as a positional player if he sacrificed a queen in his games.

His reply was that in one game he sacrificed 5 queens(not sure if the number 5 is correct but it is not the point).
He said that in case of sacrificing another rook it could be a draw but he was careful not to sacrifice another rook.

Uri

To 1.

Please don't think I'm judging you Uri because I'm not, it's just a debatable point. To me, that is unsportsmanship. If an opponent sees a 100% clear win, I expect him to take it. I don't want to be sand bagged in a chess game.

To 3.

I haven't ever heard this history of IM Bruk and his Queen sacrifices. But if sacrificing the Queen produced a win and sacrificing the Rook only produced a draw, this doesn't sound like it helps your argument in the least. It sounds like he was doing the best he could to win.

As to Drahacikfm's post.

I have noticed some moves like that.  What bothers me more, though, is when a particular problem has a mate in 2 solution and an alternate ~7.00+ line that gives the user another chance, but if the user solved for a mate in 6 it's just completely wrong.

It would be better to take away that alternate line not leading to mate in my opinion (also in your 2 examples).

I heard the story of ofer bruk directly from ofer bruk when we were in a chess club.
It is clear to the people who heard it that the queen sacrifices were not the fastest way to win because sacrifising many queens in one game does not make sense.

I think that you can also claim that not resigning in obvious lost position is not sportivic so my opinion is that if somebody does not resign in a lost position he has no moral right to complain about the fact that the opponent does not choose the fastest way to win.

Uri

[drahacikfm]

My original post was not really about people delaying an obvious win in OTB games.

It was about how the computer finds alternate winning moves in some positions here on CT that humans wouldn't think about, and whether those should be considered legitimate winning moves, or maybe should not be accepted as alternates.  The discussion seems to have drifted far away from that subject.

[sourire]

I heard the story of ofer bruk directly from ofer bruk when we were in a chess club.
It is clear to the people who heard it that the queen sacrifices were not the fastest way to win because sacrifising many queens in one game does not make sense.

I think that you can also claim that not resigning in obvious lost position is not sportivic so my opinion is that if somebody does not resign in a lost position he has no moral right to complain about the fact that the opponent does not choose the fastest way to win.

Uri

I was confused because of the last sentence explaining why he chose not to sacrifice another Rook.  It now sounds like he sacrificed 5 Queen's and would have sacrificed a Rook if it didn't lead to a draw.  Even though I disagree with that style of play, that sounds like an interesting game.

As to your other claim about not resigning a lost position. I've already drifted Drahacikfm's thread so I'll leave it alone.  No hard feelings I hope, and happy tactics training Uri Blass. 

[revenant]

No discussion of prolonging a won (or lost) game can be complete without a nod to Kelly Cottrell-Finegold, the young lady rated 1800 who was lucky enough to qualify for the 2006 U.S. Championship and proceeded to make each of her high-rated opponents play it out to the bitter end.  See her profile at chessgames.com for the game scores and a lot of back-and-forth comments from other users at the site about what happened.  In each game Kelly is checkmated or very close in the final position.

As far as I know, none of her opponents engaged in the sort of "make 5 queens and sack them" antics described above.  Perhaps their mothers always told them not to play with their food at the dinner table.  :-)  As for her own strategy, I can understand those who feel it was unsportsmanlike behavior but personally I can't help but want to root for the underdog or the "walk-on" candidate like in that movie "Invincible".

This thread obviously has "split ends" now so maybe somebody's got some conditioner?

[sourire]

I'm still surprised I haven't got any takers on the "Possible New Treatment for Alternatives" threat, everyone seems to want to keep things the same as they are, note that the proposal there would at least make the +7 versus mate in 6 consistent by having them both as alternatives.

Richard.

Hi Richard,

Back on topic, I found your reply very interesting. I don't know what you mean by '"Possible New Treatment for Alternatives" threat', but it sounds fantastic. I did a basic search and came up with no results.

Is the 'threat' to only give 1 solution and zero alternatives for every problem? If so, I love that idea. Less users will get each problem right, weighing it more valuable to those who solve correctly, and ultimately less points deducted for those who miss it.

Whenever I solve for an "alternative" my first reaction is "I no longer deserve to get this problem right." As FM Ingvar in Iceland relayed to myself and others through chessvideos.tv, I have basically missed the essence of the problem, and even if I'm given a second chance I don't deserve the credit.

At least that's how I think of it. To Revenant and Uri Blass, I hope we can start a new discussion on the "hijacked" topic, as I respect both of you.

G'night. 

[richard]

Hi Sourire, 'threat' was a freudian slip...I meant 'thread' :-)

http://chesstempo.com/chess-forum/site_feedback/possible_new_treatment_for_alternatives-t491.0.html

Richard.