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A mate in 4, with...

A mate in 4, with...

Only Chess

BigDogg
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...a thematic element similar to the mate in 8 in the "Petrov" thread.

A. Mongredian, Die Schwalbe 1930

White mates in 4

greenpawn34

e4

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Good. Very good.

I fell for the trap with Ba1. Fail, I then remembered who set it so looked for 'tricks'
en passant, can somebody castle, what was Black last move etc...nothing.
Went back to original idea.

Spoiler

1.b8=Rook 2. Ba7 3.Rb6 then double check mate.

BigDogg
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@greenpawn34

Close!

1.b8R h6! 2.Ba7 h5 3.Rb6 h4

greenpawn34

e4

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Ahh...

I was too quick in running the pawn for a stalemate and wondering why there
was tiny flaw 1.Ba7 or 1.b8=R can be played in my first line.

1.Ba7, h6( 2.b8=Q h4 3.Qb5 and mate on g1


Good one.

BigDogg
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@greenpawn34

Solved.

Wyn Davies
Long Necked Ruminant

Aisle no 3

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I thought this looked like a problem that chess engines would have a problem with so I gave it a try.

Fritz saw +30 to white and seemed happy, but after 10 seconds suddenly saw the mate. 10 seconds for a chess engine is an eternity for a mate in 4.

So I gave Stockfish a go. It saw mate in 16 instantly and then seemed to stop. At the 10 second mark it spammed the screen with messages too fast to follow and then displayed mate in 4. I think it was astonished!

Tried Komodo and it took over a minute to find the mate.
And I'm running Fat Fritz (which is supposedly an alpha-zero clone) and it still hasn't found the mate after 10 minutes.

So, well done! You've confused some chess engines, at least for a brief while.

BigDogg
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@wyndavies said
I thought this looked like a problem that chess engines would have a problem with so I gave it a try.

Fritz saw +30 to white and seemed happy, but after 10 seconds suddenly saw the mate. 10 seconds for a chess engine is an eternity for a mate in 4.

So I gave Stockfish a go. It saw mate in 16 instantly and then seemed to stop. At the 10 second mark it spammed the scree ...[text shortened]... after 10 minutes.

So, well done! You've confused some chess engines, at least for a brief while.
They're not optimized for finding the fastest mate.

It is good enough to be +30 up, for a chess playing engine.

For a solving engine, such as Popeye, this takes 0.016 s on my machine.

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