Are there engines for earning material search

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Uri Blass
Posts: 10098
Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:37 am
Location: Tel-Aviv Israel

Are there engines for earning material search

Post by Uri Blass »

For ranking of tactical problems for humans I would like to know how much material you gain if you are allowed to see X plies brute force search and Y plies qsearch search of only captures and you are also allowed to see what is the maximal capture in the next move.

Examples:
[fen]5r2/p4ppp/6k1/8/8/4P3/R4PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1 [/fen]

White can win a pawn even when X=1 Y=1

[fen]4r3/p4ppp/6k1/8/8/4P3/R4PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1 [/fen]
White can win a pawn when X=1 Y=3
White does not win material when X=1 Y=1 because in this case White can see that black has a capture after Rxa7 and cannot see what comes later
so white knows that he is not sure if he can win a pawn or not.
White does not win material when X=1 Y=2 because in this case it see that after Rxa7 Rxe3 there is a capture and has no idea what comes later

[fen]4r3/n6p/6k1/8/8/4P3/R4PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1 [/fen]
In this case white win 2 points(knight for a pawn) if X=1,Y=1 because white can see capturing the knight and in best case black can capture a pawn for it.
White can win 2 points also if X=1,Y=2 but can win 3 points if X=1,Y=3

[fen]3r4/n5p1/6k1/8/8/4P3/R4PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1 [/fen]
In this case White win a knight if X=1 regardless of Y because Y is selective search that include only captures.
White still wins a knight if X=2 because of not evaluating correctly Rxa7 Rd1#
White win a knight if X=3 regardless of Y because of the line Ra6+ Kh7 Rxa7(Rd1# is still out of reach)
Same for X=4 when Rd1# is not evaluated correctly
Only if X=5 white find that every pseudolegal move is going allow capture of the king so white wins nothing