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

Author: Peter Berger

Date: 16:00:19 02/26/05

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On February 24, 2005 at 04:58:05, Vasik Rajlich wrote:

>Certainly you can get this by choosing drawn positions. :)

Very good one :)  I think there is more to it but the burden of proof is on my
side now I assume.

> The one opening disaster was against one of the amateurs,
>where Crafty's pieces all ended on the back rank and the king was just toasted
>right in the opening - although Crafty won this game IIRC.
>

Thanks for the reminder - so there is only 24 positions left to find. The
position out of book was quite OK IMO, but it was very bad for Crafty.

The Falcon game maybe is interesting anyway, because it shows _relevance_ of
book, though positive influence remains to be shown.

The Sjeng-Crafty game of round 2 had a strong influence on opening choices of
opponents, because they realized that Crafty was ready and willing to discuss
the Berlin endgame. No one was interested. A bit unfortunate, as with only about
a month of preparation time for the event and two weeks of full-time work, the
major effort ( as with every opening repertoire) had to go to the black side of
1. e4, and it would have been fun to see more tests of the core.

 What's funny about the Falcon-Crafty game is that both sides were afraid of
exactly the same thing , because of the tournament situation that called for a
win - the opponent heading for a draw. The Falcon team chose the four knights to
avoid the Berlin endgame ( they thought was meant to be a draw weapon, sth I
would not agree to) while I avoided 4. ..Nd4 to the four knights I expected for
the very same reason. Due to limitted preparation time, the four knights didn't
get too much attention in advance, so the alternatives were playing 4...Nd4
without special preparation that potentially can lead to a quick draw or to play
the allround response 4...Bd6 , that I had studied a little, put into the books
and liked personally , but hadn't played as much as a single testgame with
Crafty. It's a fine line IMHO, but Crafty hated the bishop on d6 so much that it
couldn't think of anything else than getting rid of it ASAP - LOL . But it was a
horrible line to choose for Crafty, no doubt.

Peter



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