PART 1 • How to beat your chess computer
openings at which it kept losing. So this method isn ' t as easy as it used to be, but you can still try it.
The first version of Fritz would always play the best move it found, no matter what. That meant that if the best move caused a draw by threefold repetition of the position, the engine played it anyway. I got a couple of easy draws that way when playing it. Later versions fixed that problem by allowing the engine to play the second-best move as long as that move was evaluated as being pretty close in strength to the best move. Many chess engines have this feature programmed into their algorithms, but you still occasionally come across a chess program which will draw this way( even if it ' s winning materially).
That brings us to another method, which is a bit more tricky to execute. Have a look at this position:
White ' s a Rook up in this position. Big deal. The game is a draw: the pawns are locked, the Kings can ' t get through, and neither side can make progress, so White ' s extra Rook doesn ' t mean a blessed thing. But set up this position in your chess playing program and let your chess engine analyze it; I ' ll bet you dollars to donuts that it ' ll evaluate this as a winning position for White.
Computers do occasionally misevaluate a position, this position being a famous example. There are ways for a good player to exploit this tendency and win a game( or at least snatch an oocasional draw), but it ' s a bit tricky for the average chess player to execute.
75 chessking. com