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Subject: Re: Crafty only likes to play 2 openings

Author: Mark Longridge

Date: 23:06:01 05/08/00

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>
>It sounds like your book was made from a small set of games, with a lot of
>1. f4 games in it to make that appear the most popular.  What did you build
>it from?

Used the medium book from your ftp site, added all Fischer's games,
all Deep Blue, Kasparov's games, and yes a ton of Bird's Opening
games with 1. f4

Never thought that the number of games could decide the frequency
of a particular opening, which does make sense to me. My book is
over 33 megs, so I don't think it's a small book. I wanted something
out of the ordinary to mix things up, hence the 1. f4 games. And
indeed, after a ton of bird's opening games, some computers are
ill prepared to fight against it. It has more difficulty against
Nimzo2000 and Gandalf using this opening.

I also tried experimenting with 1. d3 and 1. a3 with very mixed results.
My conclusion with these oddball openings is that they can win, but
1. a3 seems only barely playable. Compared to really weird openings,
the bird's opening wins just over 50% of it's games. Usually it's set
to play 4 15 and 15 1 time controls, and I'd even go as far to say that
Crafty plays 4 15 better than quicker time controls, especially against
engines like Fritz and Hiarcs. For example, 4 15 seems to go much better
than 5 3.

But I don't understand the number of Philidor's Defense games, which is
rather drawish (but still a lot better than 1. a3)



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