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H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, May 23, 2011 09:18 AM UTC:
These are good suggestions. But I would like to try them with an engine
that is at least smart enough to know about pair bonuses for color-bound
pieces, and about mating potential. The significance of mating potential is
that a piece lacking it will have difficulty to fore a win in end-games
like KXKYP or KXPKYP, because sacrificing the X for the opponent's last P
would provide a very simple defense if Y has no mating potential. And such
end-games are pretty common when you start with an X-Y imbalance. But I
expect the tests only to see the full effect of this when the engine knows,
so that it will prefer to trade into KXKYP rather than KXPKXP when behind
(e.g. because of highly advanced opponent Pawn or better King position) if
X does have mating potential, even when X < Y+P.

My new variant engine Spartacus should be able to do that, with some work.

Unfortunately, I will be traveling most of the coming two weeks, so it wll
have to wait until after that.