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Subject: Re: Engines (without book) are DAMNED STRONG in the opening too

Author: Mike S.

Date: 13:52:59 01/27/04

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On January 27, 2004 at 03:07:02, Reinhard Scharnagl wrote:

>a) an intelligent engine, which could navigate itself through any opening phase

The Rogozenko match has shown that nowadays engines (even if not especially
adapted for FRC or Shuffle) are most probably stronger than a "normal" GM at
this. Rogozenko lost that match against Tiger 15, even although he was allowed
to use a computer for tactical assistance!

You always argue like engines would be complete unable to play openings
themselves. This is just plain wrong and provides false information for new
computerchess fans. It's just that the level of play may be somewhat lower
*sometimes* (in a minority of cases IMO), maybe 2300 instead of 2600 in extreme
cases, i.e. in difficult long range gambits. Man needed *decades* of opening
theory and practise to explore such gambits. Often, much of the old analysis is
wrong, refutations are found again and again. So why expect from chess engines,
that they find all this correctly in 3 minutes?? :-))

In general, engines will be better than IMs and GMs anyway, when "normal"
(normal for computers means very deep) tactical things have to be calculated in
the opening. Im not talking about Kasparov, but "normal" GMs. Most engines know
the common opening principles quite well (different quality of engines
undisputed).

Again, take a look at the Rogozenko match. See i.e.

http://www.romanianchess.org/rogozenko/tiger15.html
http://ccn.correspondencechess.com/pdf/ccnews91.pdf

A report was in CSS 3/2003:

http://www.computerschach.de/303web.htm

I'd like to hear a comment about that from you. It seems to contradict to what
you always tell about engine's weaknesses without opening book. This is just not
an up-to-date view.

Opening books are IMO not for lifting a chess program from an opening level of
i.e. 1800 to 2600, but I'd say as a rough guess, to lift it from an average of
~2400 to 2650, nowadays, for events where every bit of performance is crucial.
So the question would be if there is really much improvement necessary regarding
this.

Regards,
Mike Scheidl



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