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Subject: Re: Knee jerk reaction!

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:30:07 09/14/04

Go up one level in this thread


On September 14, 2004 at 01:46:33, martin fierz wrote:

>On September 13, 2004 at 10:20:05, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On September 13, 2004 at 06:41:10, Tord Romstad wrote:
>>
>>>On September 12, 2004 at 03:52:56, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>>
>>>>On September 12, 2004 at 00:42:50, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Sure, forcing Kasparov to play English openings, forcing Karpov to play the
>>>>>Latvian, etc.  Wouldn't be very revealing however...
>>>>
>>>>Indeed it would, every player should know his strong and weak points, perhaps he
>>>>plays the english better than he is aware of :)
>>>
>>>At least he (Kasparov) apparently plays the English better than you and Bob
>>>are aware of. ;-)
>>>
>>>The English opening was one of his main weapons with white around
>>>1985-1990.
>>>
>>>Tord
>>
>>
>>The point is he doesn't choose to play it a lot today.  Nor other openings.
>>Remember that he claimed that was the thing that cost him the last game against
>>DB, playing an opening he didn't play much.
>
>i don't understand your view on the whole subject; but i specially disagree with
>your statements about chess (players). modern grandmasters have an incredibly
>broad opening repertoire. this is a rather new development, probably assisted by
>chessbase. if you believe that korchnoi never plays anything but 1.d4 or that
>kasparov never plays the english in serious games, you are rather mistaken.

I didn't say "never".  I said "in important games".  That is pretty true.  I
have asked this very question to three different GM players, all said that they
have specific favorite openings for important games/matches.  And all said they
do _not_ play every opening system, which means your "incredibly broad
repertoire" might be true in general as they do study openings a lot, but it
doesn't appear to be true when it is time for optimal results as in important
matches or tournaments...





>kasparov was looking for excuses everywhere to explain his failure in the DB
>match, it sounds more like a plausible attempt of his to cover up the fact that
>he just played a horrible match.
>
>here's why i don't understand your attitude in this thread: as a chess player, i
>have learned a lot by playing different openings. i have, for example, lost my
>fear of the IQP over the last years as a result of playing the tarrasch defence.
>now the tarrasch is supposed to be just very slightly dubious, but it doesn't
>matter: i learned something there. by restricting crafty to what you know it can
>do you might be missing things it can't do that you might otherwise find.

All that is well and good.  But the point is still this:  Time is limited.  And
one way to fix a problem is to bypass it.  IE in building a road, I can build a
bridge over a lake in the way, or I can build _around_ the lake.  The latter is
way faster and cheaper, and the net result is the same - you still get to where
you want to go.

I've said many times in the past that I _have_ done what you suggest.  You might
remember my comments about Cray Blitz _never_ playing a g3/g6 type opening as it
didn't understand the importance of the bishop in those positions.  It was
easier at the time to just not play them.  I later fixed that in Crafty and see
no problems with that kind of play now.  But I see no overwhelming need to fix
every kind of opening setup immediately, when it can be deferred until some
later time with a simple book fix.

That is my point.  Not that a program _shouldn't_ play all openings well, but
that there is no rush to make that happen in every case.  Why is that so hard to
understand?  _everybody_ has done it and still does.  That is what the
professional book authors contribute to a chess development project...




>besides: how many players are interested in a strong chess engine? on my level
>(FM) i know exactly ZERO people who play against engines. on the other hand, 99%
>of the poeple i know on my level use engines to analyze games. conclusion: if
>you want to make an engine that is useful for the average user of strong chess
>engines, it has to be able to deal with all positions that the user throws at
>it.

supply and demand.  How many FM/IM players are there vs how many club players?
It is the market that drives this.  Chessmaster is the best example.




>
>cheers
>  martin



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