The Nolot positions were posted in rec.games.chess in mid-1994. I saved
the posts:
- Position list and analysis. Posted by Marc-Francois Baudot.
- A response by Marc-Francois Baudot. This is a response to a post by
Hsu, which I don't have, but his comments can be seen in the text. Hsu
discusses Deep Thought's results when it tried these positions.
- Discussion of positions 3, 6, and 9, by
Feng-Hsuing Hsu.
The suite can be downloaded in EPD by clicking here.
The suite contains eleven positions:
- This one seems to work, but I don't think that anyone has ever gotten a
big score.
- This one is correct, but whether or not you find it could be a matter of
luck. You might start out with a negative score, but you should get a
score of +3 or so if you search long enough.
- I don't think that anyone has ever solved this one.
- This one also seems to work, but I don't know that anyone has gotten a big
score.
- Deep Thought got > +3 in four hours. I've gotten +5 in 93 hours.
So this one is correct and extremely difficult.
- I don't think that anyone has ever solved this.
- This one is hard but works. I've gotten +2 in 37 hours.
- Hsu expresses doubt about this one, but mine returned a score of +1 after
a day. I don't know whether the key move wins or not.
- I don't think that anyone has ever found the key.
- This one is easy. Rxf7 should come back at +1 pretty quickly.
I don't know if anyone has done better than this.
- This one seems to be pretty easy to find, with a draw score or a score
that is a little positive or negative, depending upon the program.
So 3, 6, and 9 are monsters and remain unsolved, if they aren't actually
broken.
1, 4, and 10 are solvable, but the scores haven't been convincing yet.
11 is also findable, but it seems that the best result is a draw, so don't
expect a big positive score.
8 is also solvable, but it might be found due to speculation.
2, 5, and 7 are known to be findable as wins.