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

Author: Sune Fischer

Date: 01:25:37 02/18/05

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>>These so called "killer books" are always used by very strong engines on top
>>hardware.
>>The killer books seem to work best against weaker engines on weaker hardware.
>>Now isn't that odd? :)
>
>Killer books are in most of the cases for rich people who can pay for book
>makers so it is not a surprise that they work against engines with weaker
>hardware that do not have time to prepare.

That could be the reason, but the point is that it won't show a lot because
these engines are so strong already that they would have won even with a bad
book.

It would be far more interesting to give Beowulf a 700 Elo book and then go
wipeout Shredder & co in the big tournaments. :)

>I also do not beliebe in 700 elo but I certainly believe that they can improve
>the performance by 100-200 elo in a tournament when part of the opponents.
>
>If you have statistics of  a lot of games that you get 70% against some program
>with line A and 50% against the same program with line B then choosing line A is
>important.
>
>If you have similar statistics for many programs then it may give you
>significant increase in performance in tournaments.

I tend to think the effect is mostly psychological.

I can see how comming out of book with a +0.6 score against an equal opponent
must feel like half a victory, and it's not hard for me to imagine that some
would call that totally winning :)

>Even with no special preperation against specific opponent you may have
>statistics that your program  score 60% with 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.f3 and only 50%
>against the same opponents with 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 so of course opening
>preperation can help significantly in tournament.

I believe such is thing is possible, but increasing your score from 50% to 60%
is still not much more than 50-100 Elo.

-S.



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