Training Exercise

A couple of posts back I went over part of a game Jim McTigue and I played at the club last Saturday. Analysis from both carbon- and silicon-based life forms went into that post. Along the way we determined that Black should have emerged with a much better position in several lines.

But those advantages are only theoretical unless a player can convert them into wins. So as a training exercise I have been trying something I've been meaning to do for years: play the position out against a strong program.

I had had the idea many years ago while reading books & magazines. Invariably some GM would reel off a long string of analysis and end it with "White is winning" and leave it at that. Many times it was clear enough. But many times it wasn't at all clear, especially not to a mere B-class player such as myself. Later, after playing programs became strong enough, I thought, "If that's a winning position, I should be able to beat Crafty/Fritz/[flavor-of-the-month] most of the time from that point." Now that's a tall order, because even back then Crafty itself was much, much stronger than I. It would certainly punish all my tactical mistakes at the very least.

But that's the whole point of training, isn't it? I've started doing this off and on in recent months, but now I'm going to try an make this a regular feature of my work.

Anyhow, below is a position from the analysis of the game from Saturday. (I believe there's probably at least two other such positions one could use for training from that analysis.) Stockfish 6.64 evaluates this as a -2.71, meaning Black is winning.

White to play, Black to win

5k2/1p1n2p1/p3p3/3pP3/8/3B4/PP3rPP/R2K4 w - - 0 9

So far I'm not doing well. I keep giving up easy draws, except for the one time I conspired to lose! (That can be done by leaving White with both his g- and h-pawns, and then moving the Black king too far into White's queen-side position.)

Give it a try. I'm probably going to try playing the White side when I have the time, to see how the machine handles this winning position. But I'm only going to do that after a couple more tries as Black tonight, after everyone else goes to bed. I'm not finished yet!