[Retros] Pawn to-the-8th-rank mates/ database

raosorio at fibertel.com.ar raosorio at fibertel.com.ar
Sun Dec 24 17:36:27 EST 2006


Hi Hirokaz, Francois and Andrew

This theme has become a success in the retrolist. Congratulations Hirokaz.

The records on this theme will result in more than one hundred PGs so, paying atention to the Per Olin's
request to generate proper databases, I would suggest to reflect at this point on the output structure
in order to make it as friendly as posible.

As a composer, my obvious question facing this theme would be: what's already done and what's not?
Additionally, what could be improved?

In term of contents the following aspects are needed,

1) mating move: a, axb, etc, as presented by Francois
2) promoted piece type: N, B, R, Q
3) Mate profile: single (by the promoted piece), discovered (single), double.
4) Standard material in the final diagram: YES/NO
5) Promotion level economy: is the piece type oversized, YES/NO? For instance, Q promotion when a B is enough.
6) Dual avoidance by promotion level, YES/NO: in case of two alternatives (Q/R, Q/B) to give mate, one of them is
cooked.A very fine aspect discovered during this process.

On the other hand, in terms of record,

7) Number of moves
8) Number of captures

So, if these 8 fields could be friendly managed as an opened database then a composer would count with a powerfull
tool to build a record. For instance, minimyze 7) and/or 8) combined with some of 4), 5) and/or 6).

By far the most friendly tool to manage this is an spreadsheet. This could be freely ordered and filtered
and therefore there is no dominant cathegory. The 8 fields should be explicited one row each, followed by
authors and the PG. If a new aspect is found, then we would just need to add a row to the spreadsheet.
This would look like,

(a, N, NO, NO, NO, 7.0, 2) 1.c3 b5 2.Qa4 Ba6 3.Qd4 b4 4.a4 b3 5.Ra2 bxa2 6.Kd1 Bxe2+ 7.Kc2 a1=N# (Andrew Buchanan & Nicolas Dupont)

This is very similar to the Francois' presentation but 5) and 6) aspects should be included as well as
the new ones that could be found in the future. Within this approach, the database would not contain just
records in terms of 7) and 8) but potentially the combination of these with 1) to 6). Say, each combination
has its own record (even separating 7) and 8), dynamic and material records as propossed for the eight officers
homebase mate). The spreadsheet should be available in, for instance, the retrocorner.

Hirokaz is the creature's father, Francois improved the presentation and Andrew is building an spreadsheet.
Could we find a way to cordinate efforts in order to get the best production? I know that chess composers use
to behave as solitary wolfs but, sorry, I'm a management consultant and I can't avoid the temptation to say this.
Or perhaps is the Christmas atmosphere, combined with the excelent Cabernet Sauvignon bottle I liquidated with lunch.

Greetings to all the retrolist friends
Roberto Osorio







More information about the Retros mailing list