Improving SF passer code

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Btw., do not you notice how much safer the king on the second diagram is in comparison to the king on the first diagram?

I think it is safer volumes more.

Anyone thinking the king is safer on the first diagram?

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Here's a more interesting example:
[d]8/1pp5/p7/P1P5/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1
Here, SF will give connected bonus to all 3 black pawns (2 phalanx and 1 supported), and will penalize both white pawns for being isolated. In reality, the two white pawns form an important bind on the b6 square.

Maybe SF get it right already...

That extremely soft "bind" is very piece dependent (no need to incorporate the knowledge with the pawns), but the weak white pawn configuration is not. White is overextended and black pieces could dance around white squares, and pawns are easily attacked. You have to be very careful in "overloading" eval with knowledge that could be spurious, just because you think it could be useful in one set of positions.

Miguel

Quite the contrary, numerous game observations, as I am playing SF whenever possible, indicate quite clearly that SF has a very weak backward pawn code, I do not know if the weakest around, but certainly very weak for an engine of that order.

Some backward pawns on the 2nd rank are not noticed at all, which prevents sound positional advances like f7-f5, a7-a5, h7-h5, e7-e5, etc.

This loses games.

I do not know SF does in other positions, but what it does in the above mentioned one may be ok. b7 is not a the typical backward pawn. The main problem of the backward pawn it is not that it cannot advance, the problem is indirect. Most of the time, it leaves a hole in front of it. That is what it should be penalized. Here, the whole does not exist. The problem is that it cannot play b6 w/o the help of a piece. But, if you have that piece, the problem disappears. So, gambling (any eval term is a gamble) that b7 is bad, has their risks. Is it worth it?

Also, it is moving that specific pawn so important? only if you want to take advantage of a majority. Otherwise, it is not big issue if you do not have one (add a pawn in c2, then you may want to retract the c5 pawn to b4). Again, this may depend if you can build pressure to b7, otherwise, it is not Again, this is a gamble.

"backward" pawn is an ill defined concept that it is only useful for humans, who can subconsciously pick the exceptions with their extraordinary pattern recognition. In modern dynamic chess, the concept of backward has been re-thought. People play with backward pawns w/o caring for them (e.g. Pelikan/Sveshnikov in the sicilian, or the Hedgehog if you extend it to your definition). Why? because there are other aspects that come into play.

Applying human concepts "verbatim" to chess engines is not always advisable, and that is the reason why many people thought "chess knowledge" of the author could be getting in the way. Not because it is bad, but because "micromanaging" is bad. A human may tend to do that, bloating the eval. Human concepts need to be dissected into more general underlying concepts.

It is quite possible to have an engine w/o any literal concept of "backward" pawn, and still the engine will avoid them. But, that will give the engine the ability to go for them when they are not so bad (which happens often).

Miguel

It does not matter at all if the playing entity is an engine or human: all sound chess concepts apply equally to humans and engines, and backward pawns is one of them.

As currently things stand, engines in general, including the top ones, have to gain from better and much better implementation of backward pawns and related concepts of squares control at least 100-150 elo. Backward pawns are one of the weakest aspects of almost all engines, I think all. One of the resons for this is of course, that backward pawns are a very positional concept, and you need to refine a lot, in order to implement it correctly. But of course, if engine authors think that backward pawns are useless, simply because they are unable or unwilling to derive any benefit from them, progress in this field will be slowed down or frozen for quite a while.

Both Sveshnikov, and hedhehog-related structures are bad or very bad for black, precisely because they include a bind or backward pawns. Some people might try to rethink them, but that does not mean they are good. Very very top players usually avoid them and play quite the opposite.

I do not think that an engine without a developed backward pawn code can play well such structures without having the necessary specific knowledge, just relying on tuning unrelated parameters and search. Quite the opposite, it will definitely play weaker here. Adding sophisticated backward pawn knowledge will only help the engine to better understand such structures.

The worst thing of all is that I will now barely have the courage to look at how SF plays backward pawns positions, when it thinks isolated and backward pawns are due exactly the same bonus...

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

[d]rnbq1rk1/pp2ppbp/2p2np1/3p4/3P1B2/4PN1P/PPPN1PP1/R2QKB1R w KQ - 0 7

Let SF run on this position.
See what its eval at the root is, what its eval at shallow depths is, and then run a longer search.

SF will think white is better here, but longer search or deeper analysis/shootout will show that actually black is better.
Indeed, in the above position only black can have the advantage, and one of the main reasons for that is the fianchettoed black bishop on g7.

[michiguel]

Here's a more interesting example:
[d]8/1pp5/p7/P1P5/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1
Here, SF will give connected bonus to all 3 black pawns (2 phalanx and 1 supported), and will penalize both white pawns for being isolated. In reality, the two white pawns form an important bind on the b6 square.

Maybe SF get it right already...

That extremely soft "bind" is very piece dependent (no need to incorporate the knowledge with the pawns), but the weak white pawn configuration is not. White is overextended and black pieces could dance around white squares, and pawns are easily attacked. You have to be very careful in "overloading" eval with knowledge that could be spurious, just because you think it could be useful in one set of positions.

Miguel

Quite the contrary, numerous game observations, as I am playing SF whenever possible, indicate quite clearly that SF has a very weak backward pawn code, I do not know if the weakest around, but certainly very weak for an engine of that order.

Some backward pawns on the 2nd rank are not noticed at all, which prevents sound positional advances like f7-f5, a7-a5, h7-h5, e7-e5, etc.

This loses games.

I do not know SF does in other positions, but what it does in the above mentioned one may be ok. b7 is not a the typical backward pawn. The main problem of the backward pawn it is not that it cannot advance, the problem is indirect. Most of the time, it leaves a hole in front of it. That is what it should be penalized. Here, the whole does not exist. The problem is that it cannot play b6 w/o the help of a piece. But, if you have that piece, the problem disappears. So, gambling (any eval term is a gamble) that b7 is bad, has their risks. Is it worth it?

Also, it is moving that specific pawn so important? only if you want to take advantage of a majority. Otherwise, it is not big issue if you do not have one (add a pawn in c2, then you may want to retract the c5 pawn to b4). Again, this may depend if you can build pressure to b7, otherwise, it is not Again, this is a gamble.

"backward" pawn is an ill defined concept that it is only useful for humans, who can subconsciously pick the exceptions with their extraordinary pattern recognition. In modern dynamic chess, the concept of backward has been re-thought. People play with backward pawns w/o caring for them (e.g. Pelikan/Sveshnikov in the sicilian, or the Hedgehog if you extend it to your definition). Why? because there are other aspects that come into play.

Applying human concepts "verbatim" to chess engines is not always advisable, and that is the reason why many people thought "chess knowledge" of the author could be getting in the way. Not because it is bad, but because "micromanaging" is bad. A human may tend to do that, bloating the eval. Human concepts need to be dissected into more general underlying concepts.

It is quite possible to have an engine w/o any literal concept of "backward" pawn, and still the engine will avoid them. But, that will give the engine the ability to go for them when they are not so bad (which happens often).

Miguel

It does not matter at all if the playing entity is an engine or human: all sound chess concepts apply equally to humans and engines, and backward pawns is one of them.

They process the information differently. Besides, it is questionable if this extended backward pawn issue is intrinsically sound.

As currently things stand, engines in general, including the top ones, have to gain from better and much better implementation of backward pawns and related concepts of squares control at least 100-150 elo. Backward pawns are one of the weakest aspects of almost all engines, I think all. One of the resons for this is of course, that backward pawns are a very positional concept, and you need to refine a lot, in order to implement it correctly. But of course, if engine authors think that backward pawns are useless, simply because they are unable or unwilling to derive any benefit from them, progress in this field will be slowed down or frozen for quite a while.

Both Sveshnikov, and hedhehog-related structures are bad or very bad for black, precisely because they include a bind or backward pawns. Some people might try to rethink them, but that does not mean they are good. Very very top players usually avoid them and play quite the opposite.

Not true. Another scheme that goes directly into backward pawn is the Najdorf, which has been a favorite for all top players.

I do not think that an engine without a developed backward pawn code can play well such structures without having the necessary specific knowledge, just relying on tuning unrelated parameters and search. Quite the opposite, it will definitely play weaker here. Adding sophisticated backward pawn knowledge will only help the engine to better understand such structures.

Not necessarily, Gaviota does not know what a backward pawn (by design) is and avoids them if they are bad. It does not prove is the best approach, but it proves the backward pawn is not even close to orthogonal.

Miguel

The worst thing of all is that I will now barely have the courage to look at how SF plays backward pawns positions, when it thinks isolated and backward pawns are due exactly the same bonus...

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Here's a more interesting example:
[d]8/1pp5/p7/P1P5/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1
Here, SF will give connected bonus to all 3 black pawns (2 phalanx and 1 supported), and will penalize both white pawns for being isolated. In reality, the two white pawns form an important bind on the b6 square.

Maybe SF get it right already...

That extremely soft "bind" is very piece dependent (no need to incorporate the knowledge with the pawns), but the weak white pawn configuration is not. White is overextended and black pieces could dance around white squares, and pawns are easily attacked. You have to be very careful in "overloading" eval with knowledge that could be spurious, just because you think it could be useful in one set of positions.

Miguel

Quite the contrary, numerous game observations, as I am playing SF whenever possible, indicate quite clearly that SF has a very weak backward pawn code, I do not know if the weakest around, but certainly very weak for an engine of that order.

Some backward pawns on the 2nd rank are not noticed at all, which prevents sound positional advances like f7-f5, a7-a5, h7-h5, e7-e5, etc.

This loses games.

I do not know SF does in other positions, but what it does in the above mentioned one may be ok. b7 is not a the typical backward pawn. The main problem of the backward pawn it is not that it cannot advance, the problem is indirect. Most of the time, it leaves a hole in front of it. That is what it should be penalized. Here, the whole does not exist. The problem is that it cannot play b6 w/o the help of a piece. But, if you have that piece, the problem disappears. So, gambling (any eval term is a gamble) that b7 is bad, has their risks. Is it worth it?

Also, it is moving that specific pawn so important? only if you want to take advantage of a majority. Otherwise, it is not big issue if you do not have one (add a pawn in c2, then you may want to retract the c5 pawn to b4). Again, this may depend if you can build pressure to b7, otherwise, it is not Again, this is a gamble.

"backward" pawn is an ill defined concept that it is only useful for humans, who can subconsciously pick the exceptions with their extraordinary pattern recognition. In modern dynamic chess, the concept of backward has been re-thought. People play with backward pawns w/o caring for them (e.g. Pelikan/Sveshnikov in the sicilian, or the Hedgehog if you extend it to your definition). Why? because there are other aspects that come into play.

Applying human concepts "verbatim" to chess engines is not always advisable, and that is the reason why many people thought "chess knowledge" of the author could be getting in the way. Not because it is bad, but because "micromanaging" is bad. A human may tend to do that, bloating the eval. Human concepts need to be dissected into more general underlying concepts.

It is quite possible to have an engine w/o any literal concept of "backward" pawn, and still the engine will avoid them. But, that will give the engine the ability to go for them when they are not so bad (which happens often).

Miguel

It does not matter at all if the playing entity is an engine or human: all sound chess concepts apply equally to humans and engines, and backward pawns is one of them.

They process the information differently. Besides, it is questionable if this extended backward pawn issue is intrinsically sound.

As currently things stand, engines in general, including the top ones, have to gain from better and much better implementation of backward pawns and related concepts of squares control at least 100-150 elo. Backward pawns are one of the weakest aspects of almost all engines, I think all. One of the resons for this is of course, that backward pawns are a very positional concept, and you need to refine a lot, in order to implement it correctly. But of course, if engine authors think that backward pawns are useless, simply because they are unable or unwilling to derive any benefit from them, progress in this field will be slowed down or frozen for quite a while.

Both Sveshnikov, and hedhehog-related structures are bad or very bad for black, precisely because they include a bind or backward pawns. Some people might try to rethink them, but that does not mean they are good. Very very top players usually avoid them and play quite the opposite.

Not true. Another scheme that goes directly into backward pawn is the Najdorf, which has been a favorite for all top players.

I do not think that an engine without a developed backward pawn code can play well such structures without having the necessary specific knowledge, just relying on tuning unrelated parameters and search. Quite the opposite, it will definitely play weaker here. Adding sophisticated backward pawn knowledge will only help the engine to better understand such structures.

Not necessarily, Gaviota does not know what a backward pawn (by design) is and avoids them if they are bad. It does not prove is the best approach, but it proves the backward pawn is not even close to orthogonal.

Miguel

The worst thing of all is that I will now barely have the courage to look at how SF plays backward pawns positions, when it thinks isolated and backward pawns are due exactly the same bonus...

Humans and computers search, evaluate and process information in exactly the same way. Humans and computers play chess in exactly the same way.

I suppose Gaviota plays backward pawn concepts somewhat better than a range of other strong engines, but still sufficiently bad. Although I did not check this specifically, I am almost certain it is like that, it just can not be another way.
Every time someone mentions to me the word orthogonal, I become extremely suspicious.

I do not know about top players and Sveshnikov, Najdorf, Hedgehog, all I am familiar with are the below 2 games:

[pgn][Event "Horgen SWZ"]
[Site "Horgen SWZ"]
[Date "1994.??.??"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "9"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Garry Kasparov"]
[Black "Alexey Shirov"]
[ECO "B33"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "75"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.Ndb5 d6
7.Bf4 e5 8.Bg5 a6 9.Na3 b5 10.Nd5 Be7 11.Bxf6 Bxf6 12.c3 Bb7
13.Nc2 Nb8 14.a4 bxa4 15.Rxa4 Nd7 16.Rb4 Nc5 17.Rxb7 Nxb7
18.b4 Bg5 19.Na3 O-O 20.Nc4 a5 21.Bd3 axb4 22.cxb4 Qb8 23.h4
Bh6 24.Ncb6 Ra2 25.O-O Rd2 26.Qf3 Qa7 27.Nd7 Nd8 28.Nxf8 Kxf8
29.b5 Qa3 30.Qf5 Ke8 31.Bc4 Rc2 32.Qxh7 Rxc4 33.Qg8+ Kd7
34.Nb6+ Ke7 35.Nxc4 Qc5 36.Ra1 Qd4 37.Ra3 Bc1 38.Ne3 1-0


[/pgn]

[pgn][Event "Wch Moscow i 40/202; YB 4/91"]
[Site "16"]
[Date "1985.10.15"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "16"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Anatoly Karpov"]
[Black "Garry Kasparov"]
[ECO "B44"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "80"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nb5 d6 6.c4 Nf6 7.N1c3
a6 8.Na3 d5 9.cxd5 exd5 10.exd5 Nb4 11.Be2 Bc5 12.O-O O-O
13.Bf3 Bf5 14.Bg5 Re8 15.Qd2 b5 16.Rad1 Nd3 17.Nab1 h6 18.Bh4
b4 19.Na4 Bd6 20.Bg3 Rc8 21.b3 g5 22.Bxd6 Qxd6 23.g3 Nd7
24.Bg2 Qf6 25.a3 a5 26.axb4 axb4 27.Qa2 Bg6 28.d6 g4 29.Qd2
Kg7 30.f3 Qxd6 31.fxg4 Qd4+ 32.Kh1 Nf6 33.Rf4 Ne4 34.Qxd3 Nf2+
35.Rxf2 Bxd3 36.Rfd2 Qe3 37.Rxd3 Rc1 38.Nb2 Qf2 39.Nd2 Rxd1+
40.Nxd1 Re1+ 0-1


[/pgn]

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

[d]r2qk2r/1b3ppp/p2p1b2/2nNp3/1R2P3/2P5/1PN2PPP/3QKB1R w Kkq - 3 17


As Gaviota is a backward pawn expert even without having backward pawns eval in its code, does Gaviota find Rb7 above, with substantial white advantage?

[d]r1bqkb1r/1p3ppp/p1nppn2/8/2P1P3/N1N5/PP3PPP/R1BQKB1R b KQkq - 1 8

Why do you think Kasparov plays here d6-d5, sacrificing a pawn, just to get rid of the bind on the central d5 square?
And this, in the heat of the World championship match?

As a prominent bind/backward pawns expert, does Gaviota find d6-d5 above as the best move for black?

[michiguel]

[d]r2qk2r/1b3ppp/p2p1b2/2nNp3/1R2P3/2P5/1PN2PPP/3QKB1R w Kkq - 3 17


As Gaviota is a backward pawn expert even without having backward pawns eval in its code, does Gaviota find Rb7 above, with substantial white advantage?

[d]r1bqkb1r/1p3ppp/p1nppn2/8/2P1P3/N1N5/PP3PPP/R1BQKB1R b KQkq - 1 8

Why do you think Kasparov plays here d6-d5, sacrificing a pawn, just to get rid of the bind on the central d5 square?
And this, in the heat of the World championship match?

As a prominent bind/backward pawns expert, does Gaviota find d6-d5 above as the best move for black?

You are 4 years late

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 28&start=0

And this has nothing to do with backward pawns. It is about color weaknesses and outposts. The backward pawn is there with or without the sacrifice.

Miguel

[michiguel]

Here's a more interesting example:
[d]8/1pp5/p7/P1P5/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1
Here, SF will give connected bonus to all 3 black pawns (2 phalanx and 1 supported), and will penalize both white pawns for being isolated. In reality, the two white pawns form an important bind on the b6 square.

Maybe SF get it right already...

That extremely soft "bind" is very piece dependent (no need to incorporate the knowledge with the pawns), but the weak white pawn configuration is not. White is overextended and black pieces could dance around white squares, and pawns are easily attacked. You have to be very careful in "overloading" eval with knowledge that could be spurious, just because you think it could be useful in one set of positions.

Miguel

Quite the contrary, numerous game observations, as I am playing SF whenever possible, indicate quite clearly that SF has a very weak backward pawn code, I do not know if the weakest around, but certainly very weak for an engine of that order.

Some backward pawns on the 2nd rank are not noticed at all, which prevents sound positional advances like f7-f5, a7-a5, h7-h5, e7-e5, etc.

This loses games.

I do not know SF does in other positions, but what it does in the above mentioned one may be ok. b7 is not a the typical backward pawn. The main problem of the backward pawn it is not that it cannot advance, the problem is indirect. Most of the time, it leaves a hole in front of it. That is what it should be penalized. Here, the whole does not exist. The problem is that it cannot play b6 w/o the help of a piece. But, if you have that piece, the problem disappears. So, gambling (any eval term is a gamble) that b7 is bad, has their risks. Is it worth it?

Also, it is moving that specific pawn so important? only if you want to take advantage of a majority. Otherwise, it is not big issue if you do not have one (add a pawn in c2, then you may want to retract the c5 pawn to b4). Again, this may depend if you can build pressure to b7, otherwise, it is not Again, this is a gamble.

"backward" pawn is an ill defined concept that it is only useful for humans, who can subconsciously pick the exceptions with their extraordinary pattern recognition. In modern dynamic chess, the concept of backward has been re-thought. People play with backward pawns w/o caring for them (e.g. Pelikan/Sveshnikov in the sicilian, or the Hedgehog if you extend it to your definition). Why? because there are other aspects that come into play.

Applying human concepts "verbatim" to chess engines is not always advisable, and that is the reason why many people thought "chess knowledge" of the author could be getting in the way. Not because it is bad, but because "micromanaging" is bad. A human may tend to do that, bloating the eval. Human concepts need to be dissected into more general underlying concepts.

It is quite possible to have an engine w/o any literal concept of "backward" pawn, and still the engine will avoid them. But, that will give the engine the ability to go for them when they are not so bad (which happens often).

Miguel

It does not matter at all if the playing entity is an engine or human: all sound chess concepts apply equally to humans and engines, and backward pawns is one of them.

They process the information differently. Besides, it is questionable if this extended backward pawn issue is intrinsically sound.

As currently things stand, engines in general, including the top ones, have to gain from better and much better implementation of backward pawns and related concepts of squares control at least 100-150 elo. Backward pawns are one of the weakest aspects of almost all engines, I think all. One of the resons for this is of course, that backward pawns are a very positional concept, and you need to refine a lot, in order to implement it correctly. But of course, if engine authors think that backward pawns are useless, simply because they are unable or unwilling to derive any benefit from them, progress in this field will be slowed down or frozen for quite a while.

Both Sveshnikov, and hedhehog-related structures are bad or very bad for black, precisely because they include a bind or backward pawns. Some people might try to rethink them, but that does not mean they are good. Very very top players usually avoid them and play quite the opposite.

Not true. Another scheme that goes directly into backward pawn is the Najdorf, which has been a favorite for all top players.

I do not think that an engine without a developed backward pawn code can play well such structures without having the necessary specific knowledge, just relying on tuning unrelated parameters and search. Quite the opposite, it will definitely play weaker here. Adding sophisticated backward pawn knowledge will only help the engine to better understand such structures.

Not necessarily, Gaviota does not know what a backward pawn (by design) is and avoids them if they are bad. It does not prove is the best approach, but it proves the backward pawn is not even close to orthogonal.

Miguel

The worst thing of all is that I will now barely have the courage to look at how SF plays backward pawns positions, when it thinks isolated and backward pawns are due exactly the same bonus...

Humans and computers search, evaluate and process information in exactly the same way. Humans and computers play chess in exactly the same way.

I suppose Gaviota plays backward pawn concepts somewhat better than a range of other strong engines, but still sufficiently bad. Although I did not check this specifically, I am almost certain it is like that, it just can not be another way.

Whatever Gaviota plays is irrelevant. The point was to show how interconnected several concepts are.

Every time someone mentions to me the word orthogonal, I become extremely suspicious.

You should really try to understand what it means.

I do not know about top players and Sveshnikov, Najdorf, Hedgehog, all I am familiar with are the below 2 games:

Have you never seen Fischer or Kasparov playing e5 after white plays Be2 in the Najdorf?

There are many examples in which you have allow yourself a backward pawn. Finding a games here or there is not proving much. Here you have an example where f5 is the best move

[D]r1b1r1k1/1pp1n1pp/p1pb1p2/8/4PP2/1NN5/PPP3PP/R1B2RK1 w - - 0 12

Miguel

[pgn][Event "Horgen SWZ"]
[Site "Horgen SWZ"]
[Date "1994.??.??"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "9"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Garry Kasparov"]
[Black "Alexey Shirov"]
[ECO "B33"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "75"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.Ndb5 d6
7.Bf4 e5 8.Bg5 a6 9.Na3 b5 10.Nd5 Be7 11.Bxf6 Bxf6 12.c3 Bb7
13.Nc2 Nb8 14.a4 bxa4 15.Rxa4 Nd7 16.Rb4 Nc5 17.Rxb7 Nxb7
18.b4 Bg5 19.Na3 O-O 20.Nc4 a5 21.Bd3 axb4 22.cxb4 Qb8 23.h4
Bh6 24.Ncb6 Ra2 25.O-O Rd2 26.Qf3 Qa7 27.Nd7 Nd8 28.Nxf8 Kxf8
29.b5 Qa3 30.Qf5 Ke8 31.Bc4 Rc2 32.Qxh7 Rxc4 33.Qg8+ Kd7
34.Nb6+ Ke7 35.Nxc4 Qc5 36.Ra1 Qd4 37.Ra3 Bc1 38.Ne3 1-0


[/pgn]

[pgn][Event "Wch Moscow i 40/202; YB 4/91"]
[Site "16"]
[Date "1985.10.15"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "16"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Anatoly Karpov"]
[Black "Garry Kasparov"]
[ECO "B44"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "80"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nb5 d6 6.c4 Nf6 7.N1c3
a6 8.Na3 d5 9.cxd5 exd5 10.exd5 Nb4 11.Be2 Bc5 12.O-O O-O
13.Bf3 Bf5 14.Bg5 Re8 15.Qd2 b5 16.Rad1 Nd3 17.Nab1 h6 18.Bh4
b4 19.Na4 Bd6 20.Bg3 Rc8 21.b3 g5 22.Bxd6 Qxd6 23.g3 Nd7
24.Bg2 Qf6 25.a3 a5 26.axb4 axb4 27.Qa2 Bg6 28.d6 g4 29.Qd2
Kg7 30.f3 Qxd6 31.fxg4 Qd4+ 32.Kh1 Nf6 33.Rf4 Ne4 34.Qxd3 Nf2+
35.Rxf2 Bxd3 36.Rfd2 Qe3 37.Rxd3 Rc1 38.Nb2 Qf2 39.Nd2 Rxd1+
40.Nxd1 Re1+ 0-1


[/pgn]

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

It might be the case that, concerning bishop outpost values for a5,a6,h5 and h6, those should be considered only in the mg, but not for the eg.

Same might hold true for knight outpost values - consider knight outposts with some small bonus for a5,a6,h5 and h6, but only for the mg.

I wonder how SF initially decided, that bishop and knight outposts are valid only for files b through g?

In the mg, a and h files for squares into the enemy camp are of course also important.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

SF unable to recognize kingside fianchettoed bishops is one of the main reasons why it plays so bad openings like the KID, Reti, KIA, Catalan, Closed Sicilian, the English, etc.

This, along with the lack of pointed chain bonus, is of course the explanation why SF plays worse of all KID structures.

I say SF can gain 15 elo by precise implementation of kingside fianchettoed bishop alone.