[Retros] Dead Reckoning Aspects of Massacre SPGs.

[Andrew]

Francois, congratulations on your amazing Massacre SPG results, and Gerd & 
Norbert congratulations that your earlier results are confirmed.

One of the x=4 SPG is disallowed because there the last capture takes place 
in a dead position (2 bishops, same colour). 

However, Dead Reckoning might in fact *enable* a massacre position to be 
SPG. Suppose there is a position with 2 bare kings on the board which can be 
reached by 2004 different proof games. However, in 2003 of these proof 
games, the last capture is a minor piece, while in the 2004th, the last 
capture is a major piece. Voila, the holy grail would be found! 

I discussed this with Paul Raican a while ago, but I think it may be worth 
revisiting with your program/hardware Francois. 

Cheers,
Andrew. 



> (3) BUFFET SPGs 

> 

> I don't know what's the right name for this, I'm talking about those SPGs

> where every move is a capture except x moves, for x = 3,4,... 

> 

> I was able to do x=3 and x=4 with my program, but apparently this stuff is

> already known. 

> 

> For x=3, I get 3 SPG 15.5 with 4 pieces left on the board. 

> 

> On the Chess Problem Database Server, the comment attached to P0005406

> lists the same 3 problems and mentions that they're the only 3 such SPGs. 

> 

> For x=4, I get many SPG 16.5 with 3 pieces left on the board: 

> 

> 18 SPGs without Article 1.3 of the Laws

> 17 SPGs with Article 1.3 (Dead Reckoning!) 

> 

> A comment in German attached to P0005371 talks about 19 such SPGs. So

> there's a slight discrepancy here. 

> 

> I'm not sure yet if I can do x=5, it's really on the cutting edge of what

> I can tackle. The comment in German seems to imply that no one has done it

> before. Is it true? 

> 

>