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Subject: Re: Watson vs Dorfman

Author: Jens Kahlenberg

Date: 04:02:15 07/10/03

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On July 10, 2003 at 06:27:07, Andrei Fortuna wrote:

>Perhaps I was didn't express my goal as I should have.
>
>While my ultimate goal is to teach my chess engine to play good chess, I cannot
>achieve this without understanding myself as a human player the modern chess
>play. Therefor the need for books to study.
>


I guess that Watson's "Secrets ..." won't help you in teaching your engine, but
it will help you in understanding current GM practice a lot. Watson and Dorfman
have nearly totally different viewpoints, so Watson's "review" might be a bit
coloured by emotions (e.g. "... with his Mostly Inapplicable Pedagogical
Oberservations").

Watson is IMHO not implementable, but Dorfman might be. Here's a link to a more
uncomitted review: http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review313.pdf

To summarize, teach Watson to yourself and teach Dorfman to your engine ;-)

Best Regards,
Jens


>I have looked for references on the book you mentioned, I have found a review of
>GM John Watson which ends with :
>
>"I have no doubt that Dorfman is a good teacher/trainer, but people with a
>particular skill do not always write good books. Unless you're looking for “The
>Lightly Annotated Games of Dorfman With His Mostly Inapplicable Pedagogical
>Observations”, you should stay away from this book. Perhaps his recently
>released follow-up will be better, but for that to be true he would have to have
>brought himself down to earth, and to have widened his base of examples."
>
>(full review here :
>http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews/jw_method_in_chess.html)
>
>Maybe if it doesn't work for Mr. Watson it would work for me but I wouldn't bet
>for it.
>
>Andrei



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