Your brains should be scanned then
and mine too
Professor Penrose' puzzle
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Feb 14, 2021
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#23
The point of the puzzle is:
a) humans can easily see it's a draw and find a strategy for white that draws
b) powerful chess engines (like stockfish) that look ahead and evaluate positions think black is winning by a huge margin
If you analyze the position with chess.com's engine, for example, it shows black is winning by an overwhelming margin (-26.9). In fact I played against the computer (max level) and it kept moving the bishops while I kept moving my king, and it didn't change it's score! It even tried to give up a bishop (which I took) and it still continued to think black is winning.
The above shows that the look-ahead engine doesn't have the smartness needed to see that white can maintain position *forever* so that only the black bishops can move, and black bishops alone can't mate as the white King can always remain on a white square, forcing a draw.
But it's kind of obvious. I think every second chess player can solve it. Why would someone conduct an experiment like that in order to scan the brains of people who can find the simple solution? I thought he was planning something bigger.
I think this puzzle is easy asf