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Subject: Re: The importance of opening books -- a simple experiment

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 14:46:47 02/17/05

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On February 17, 2005 at 16:16:16, Anthony Cozzie wrote:

>I don't think you are being quite fair to Vincent here.  His actual statement
>(or at least what I think he intended to say) is that "A good book vs no book is
>worth 700 elo at the World Championships", and I think that it is not that far
>off.  If you show up at the World Championships with no book, you have 0% chance
>to win, regardless of what engine you use.

I am not sure what he intended to say, but he did not mention anything about
World
Championships (at least not in the initial post, I haven't bothered to read the
whole
thread).  Basically he just said "book=700 Elo" without any qualifications at
all.

Perhaps it was just intended as a joke, as has been suggested in the current
thread.

>Anyway, if you don't feel the need to work on the book, don't.

Of course I am not going to do much (if any) work on the book.  From my point of
view, there is no point.  I cannot see how I can learn anything useful from it.

>Arturo and I will enjoy getting good positions and easy points :)

As you know, I usually don't participate in tournaments.  And if I ever do, my
purpose
is to meet the other participants, and not to try to win.  The competitive
aspect of
computer chess has very little interest to me.  My focus is not on defeating
other
chess engines, but on contributing to the continued improvement of chess playing
algorithms.  I want to see the general level of amateur computer chess engines
continue to rise, and to feel that I have at least a tiny part of the honor for
this.
From this perspective, working on the book would be a complete waste of time.

I concede that a good book is definitely an important factor in tournament play,
but it will be really hard to convince me that it is worth anywhere near 700
points.
I leave the discussion of precisely how much can be gained by a good book to
those who are more interested in tournaments.

And by the way, trust me:  Zappa really wouldn't need any special book
preparation
to get good positions and easy points against Glaurung.  :-)

Tord



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