Why do engines fail to solve a 400 year old chess puzzle?

Here is a chess puzzle composed by Gioachino Greco. This was created in 1623 and its black to move and draw the game. He was an Italian chess player and writer. He recorded some of the earliest chess games known. His games, all against anonymous opponents (“NN”), were quite possibly constructs but served as highly useful tools for spotting opening traps. Mikhail Botvinnik considered Greco to be the first professional chess player. In this video I am showing how chess engine Komodo 10 fails to solve it and attempt to answer why that happens !
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Gioachino Greco, 1623
Black to move and draw
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This position in Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN) is: r7/8/8/5bk1/8/5B2/5RPP/6K1 b – – 0 0
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411 Comments

  1. This position is not draw after the rook disappeared. Dont accept the bishop sacrifice..

  2. stockfish 10 found the draw immidietly on my computer. maybe you shouldnt use a 20 years old computer with a weak-as-fuck-processor which literally has 1/40 of the power of a modern CPU (you can see it because of the 580 kN/s that his computer must be from like 1970. modern CPU's like intel i7 calculate at around 20.000 kN/s at this position). hardware makes a difference, you know???

  3. i dont understand can someone explain, what if WK moves to G2 after white pawn takes bishop, cant it used to advance and black king would have to retreat

  4. It should be noted that engines often have wrong evaluations BUT they solve the puzzle nontheless.

  5. I think stokfish made this video to discredit komodo.

  6. That’s not even a draw. Move your king up… Bet I can win as white in that situation

  7. Never mind. Can only stalemate. Can’t checkmate

  8. Check out. Tony Biggz defeats stock fish 10 in 1min 13sec. Only18 moves Level 12cpu on pro.

  9. Check out. Tony Biggz defeats stock fish10 In 1min 13sec. Only 18 moves Level 12cpu on pro.

  10. Stockfish 11 can solve it now. No idea about earlier versions of stockfish.

  11. What if the sacrifice is not accepted. I mean

  12. You can just move the King to f7, Why are you gonna capture it?

  13. It's only natural that AI is "stupid", it's already in their name: Aint Intelligent.

  14. Black n draw I think.. Check rook n takes then pin the pawn n takes.. and that's it draw

  15. Engines can't solve it because they expect g3 so trading the rooks just leads to a quicker mate.

  16. I dont understand why this should be a draw. Cant you promote the pawn by protecting it with your king?

  17. Stockfish finds it in a Planck length of time

  18. I would say that you might be pretty ignorant, the engines calculate every single move, depending on your software it can take a bit for the engine to find the objectively best move. Engines aren’t stupid because they calculate dumb moves?

  19. Linking Komodo to an endgame tablebase solves the puzzle instantly.

  20. Fat Fritz v.2 solved the position in 5 seconds.

  21. I think you can promote, are you sure you cannot? If black Kh4, black Kg2 and King must go back. With the help of bishop..

  22. What about bishop C3, rook A1, then rook takes rook? That's checkmate for black.

  23. Are you sure this is a drawn endgame like I know you computers cant find it but even stockfish is saying white is better and after I saced the bishop it still said white was better

  24. What if white instinctively doesnt accept the bishop sacrifice?

  25. 3:55 Note that the computer can see that with only one pawn, the game is almost a draw, but with two pawns (at h file), it cannot detect it.

  26. as a decently okay chess player, to be completely honest i saw the draw immediately. I was baffled to find the engines dont find it straight away!

  27. Why will the pawn take the bishop. King can move f2 then pawn g3- white wins

  28. Seemed like many people forget about stalemates. if you know the king and pawn theory you know pawn on H or A file is a draw, When the pawn reach h7, the black king will just hide on a h8, and sience its you only have lights square bishop it's useless. there's no way to guard the pawn or promote it without being captured or stalemates.

  29. Engines are improving year by year it depends which engine you using and how it was programmed

  30. Pawn takes a bishop is not a forcing move, you can choose to ignore the bishop and win the game

  31. It should be pronounced something like “joeakkino”

  32. Ur stupid or what… Clearly the white is winning after tht silly sacrifice… Stupids!!

  33. BS video. There are 7 pieces on the board. The engine solves this instantly

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