Newsgroups: comp.ai.games
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From: sje@mv.mv.com (Steven J. Edwards)
Subject: Re: Chess - exhaustive searching
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Date: Fri, 14 Apr 1995 20:24:29 GMT
References: <scottecD6FAH9.2pp@netcom.com> <3ln0ol$ame@mycroft.rand.org> <D6GDIx.DM@cs.vu.nl> <3mjel3$q4e@nic.lth.se> <D6zECo.C24@mv.mv.com> <3mm3bm$5no@gaia.cc.gatech.edu>
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jriechel@cc.gatech.edu (James Alan Riechel) writes:

>sje@mv.mv.com (Steven J. Edwards) writes:

>>I may not fully understand what you mean by "possibility".  Note that
>>a position will have zero, one, or two possible en passant captures.

>Really?  Maybe I'm missing something.  It seems to me that a position can only
>have zero or one possible en passant captures.  Say that Black has just moved
>...g4.  Further assume that White now plays f4.  It is now Black's turn and he
>has available the en passant capture gxf3.  But let's further assume that Black
>plays ...h5 instead and that White had a pawn on g5.  There are still only one
>possible enpassant capture (this time for White with gxh6), since the en passant
>capture gxf3 disappears if Black doesn't play it immediately.

wpa5 wpc5 bpb7  BTM plays b5  --> two different en passant captures

>>I am unsure of the utility of this discussion.  I hope that no one
>>considers state space enumeration to be a good metric for evaluation
>>of game complexity.  It is a trivial exercise to construct games with
>>arbirarily large spaces that are simple to solve.

>But are the enumerated states minimal?

What do you mean by "minimal"?  Think of Nim played to a limit of
10^10000 taking 1 or 2 points at a time.  Plenty of states there,

-- Steven (sje@mv.mv.com)


