Shortest-proof-game challenge

What's the rule on editing other peoples work?

Amazing solution!!!Well done!!!

p.s.Although the opening had some inaccuracies

I was mistaken; I counted the pieces wrong and it turns out that the a7 pawn can be used to move white's a2 pawn to the b file.

Yeah, I'm pretty new to this and I mainly wanted to show that it is possible so there can definitely be a shorter solution.

In case I win, do I have to set up a diagram or can I use a textual problem. What I mean is can I give a few conditions that have to be met in the final position instead of giving a diagram (of course I would check if the positions can be met). I think I have a, IMO, cool problem  (I'll check if it is possible, but I'm 99% sure it is)

This is amazingly hard. The past 2 challenges have gone by and I haven't found a solution for any of them.

Is there a specific way you guys look at these problems? Do you look at the pawn structure first? Do you make a plan which pieces end up where and in which order? Please help me! I feel like such an idiot :/

@MaartenSmit

This won't help with getting the shortest solution, but this is how I come up with solutions.

In post #97, I looked at the pawn structure first and saw that White had to get his four pawns behind black's pawns.  I decided to do this one file at a time.  I decided to put a white pawn on c5, let black play bxc4, move a white pawn to d5, let black play exd4, move a white pawn to e5 (now that the e-file is clear), let black play fxe4, move a pawn up to f5, and play fxe4.

After deciding on this plan, I needed to decide which pieces to let black capture.  I figured out that the piece on c4 could be a pawn, but pawns would need to be promoted to replace the other pieces.  This would take care of white's remaining 3 pawns.  This helped me come up with a game that worked, even though it was definately not the shortest possible.

If you mean "borrowing" moves from someone else's answer, making small improvements, and posting the "augmented" version as your own, then there are no restrictions - as long as the latter sequence is shorter (even by just one move), it doesn't matter how similar it is to the former.

This question first arose during round 2, so if you're curious as to why such tactics are allowed, you might want to read post #37 for my reasoning behind it. Of course, if I completely misinterpretted your question, and you meant something different, just say so.

Btw, pretty efficient proof game for someone "new to this", so good job on that.

Although it was never directly stated, the assumed rule up until now has been that the previous winner must diagram a specific position. However, your idea of simply giving a set of conditions to be met is a terrific suggestion that could certainly make things a lot more interesting. Could everyone else let me know what their opinion is on this? It's a rule change I wouldn't hesitate to make, but don't want to do so without some sort of consensus.

Sounds interesting.

It seems I wasn't that efficient browni beat me by a lot.

I think the only experience I have in this kinda stuff is in some similar thread here where the problem was to get a legal game that could do the position, I think I failed (maybe I succeeded :S) but IIRC the goal wasn't shortest but just to find one.

That's what I meant, about borrowing moves. I don't really have a problem with it, but I just wanted clarification. IMO, I think some sort of restriction should be in place, something like only the first 1/2 or 2/3 can be copied,  but I do understand why borrowing is allowed.

I think textual problems would help in that area, since there could always be the possibility of a better last position :)

In the problem I had in mind, finding a position that would meet the conditions I thought of would probably be harder than getting to such a position :P

I guess I'll have to try and beat browni if I want to post it :D


 

Noted. I'd still like a few other opinions before going ahead with it, though, so could everyone who's been following the thread read stubborn_d0nkey's proposal and give some kind of feedback on it? Thanks in advance :)

My first thought on seeing post #120 was that there had to be a mistake or something, because 36 moves just couldn't be possible. Then I actually played through the moves and realized it was legit  

"Wow" is all I can say.

Here are my thoughts on stubborn_d0nkey's propopsal.  A description such as he suggested would require the first person who posts a solution to do much more work than anyone else.  Also, it would discourage participation until a position is posted that meets the criteria.  In general, I think it would decrease the number of people who try each week.

Well, when I made that comment I was thinking it couldn't be improvable by more than 5 or 6 moves (although I hadn't tried it) - browni's post was an eye-popper =O  

Yes, there have been numerous threads involving whether or not a given position was legal, but this is the first that deals solely with shortest proof games (which I find more interesting) as far as I know. I'm hoping its popularity will go up over time.

I'll probably end up implementing your idea very soon, but am still waiting for at least a few more opinions on it just to make sure everybody's happy.

There can't be more than an hour left before the end of this round, so you'd better hurry if you really plan on winning ;)

Time has expired for round 9, so browni3141 wins. Round 10 begins when the next position is posted. Since Chess.com no longer provides exact time stamps for comments, I'd strongly prefer that people give the time at which they are posting each new position from now on (so that deadlines are more clearly defined), though this is optional of course.

Then they should also post their timezone as well, or a standard timezone should be chosen

That is an interesting point, and one I hadn't thought of, but I think it would only be true in certain instances where the challenge of finding a position to meet the criteria dwarfs that of getting there efficiently. In the majority of cases it seems there would be a wide variety of easily-found satisfactory positions, and it would be more a matter of finding the one that can be reached in the fewest moves. There would actually be some similarity to the current system, where we try to avoid giving positions that are ridiculously hard just to get to at all, because then no one would want to post the first solution and let everyone else "piggyback" it.

Ah - Chess.com has always gone by U.S. Pacific Time, so I guess I'd gotten so used to it that I sort of forgot the time zones would be different for everybody. Well, needless to say I'd prefer U.S. Pacific, if it's not too much trouble for anyone. Any time zone is obviously better than nothing, though (as long as it is clearly specified).

Rather take GMT. Everybody knows how far they are from GMT right? I always have to calculate how many hours behind you guys are.

Then again, the exact hour isn't incredibly important..