Saturday, April 2, 2016

You can't be serious, man....

I'm giving ICC's one month trial membership a try. I've become infatuated with the TrainingBot and TacticalBot features, but I'm downright addicted to ProblemBot. It's pretty much what it sounds like: one challenges a bot to a game, and a problem is supplied. TrainingBot (and perhaps TacticalBot) will give even rate one's performance. (Each individual problem has a rating, too, which also changes based on how competitors fare against it. Nice!)

Not so with ProblemBot, but that's okay as then one doesn't obsess about ratings. There are flaws with the program, however. The big one is that the problems will sometimes be declared over even if I'm not sure what to do. For example, a problem is often declared done if it reaches the stage of queen vs. rook. Okay, fine, I'm supposed to know how to do that, or at least have books and such that can show me how.

But sometimes the problem just stops, declares me the winner, and moves on leaving me completely mystified. Sometimes I have no idea what the heck I'm supposed to do even AFTER plugging it into Stockfish. Here's an example from yesterday.

A. Troitzky, 1921
(correction by S. Hornecker)
After 4 d8(N)
3N4/2N4k/6p1/4n1K1/8/6P1/8/8 b - - 0 4

Here, with Black to move, I'm declared the winner. HERE. You CANNOT be serious!

Seriously, could you win this as White, with Black to move?

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