Author: Vasik Rajlich
Date: 02:30:25 02/18/05
Go up one level in this thread
On February 18, 2005 at 04:25:37, Sune Fischer wrote: > >>>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. I quite agree here. The other thing to keep in mind is just what is involved in increasing the score from 50% to 60%. It means that every fifth game you flat out win in the opening. Or - every "2.5th" game (ie 40% of games), your position is so great that you'll score 75% from it. (Or would have equal chances against an engine 200 points above you.) Chess just doesn't work like this. Anyway I think this entire debate is psychological. Promoting the value of hand-crafted books is a way to promote the value of individual tournaments over long matches/rating lists - and from a sporting/spectating point of view it's hard to argue with that. Statistical significance is just not that exciting ... Vas
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