Author: Stefan Meyer-Kahlen
Date: 11:05:24 09/06/00
There has been a lot of discussion here recently about the quality of Shredder’s opening book in London. Most people got the impression that Shredder’s book is very weak, so I guess I have to correct some things here as I think that Shredder’s book is very good and very well tuned to Shredder’s strengths and weaknesses and I am quite happy with it. We played weak lines in two games in London where we came out of book in a very bad or even lost position, but in the rest of the games I was quite happy with Shredder’s opening choice. My cooperation with Sandro Necchi has just started, so we knew that there might be some holes in the book, but we have already achieved a lot and really are having an excellent book now. I am looking forward to the commercial book of Shredder5 and further tournament books in the future as I think that Shredder’s book is already better than ever before. Here are some brief comments on the opening lines Shredder played in London from my point of view: R1, white against Diep: Out of book after 16…Kh8. One of the main lines in Sveshnikov where we knew that Shredder usually knows how to continue, R2, black against Tiger: Out of book after 8…Nxd4. An inferior line by Tiger with an easy win for Shredder, R3, white against Fritz: Out of book after 15…Nd6. I heard some criticism that this line is too harmless, but we played this line on purpose as Shredder likes this kind of positions and scores very well with it. R4, black against Rebel: Out of book after 26.Bf4. This was a weak line by Shredder. We knew that we had some problems with the Belgrad Gambit. Actually the line with 14...Nxf3 was one of the last lines we worked on before London. We thought we had fixed it, but apparently we missed that one. R5, white against Junior: Out of book after 12…Nd7. Again we were criticized for playing harmlessly, but in our opinion Shredder is very strong in this type of positions so we also played this one on purpose. In this game Shredder didn’t find the right plan though, so we got outplayed by Junior. R6, black against Nimzo: Out of book after 19.Rg3. We scored very well with this line in our tests so we decided to play it in London. Unfortunately we overlooked 19.Rg3 which seems to be very strong, so we came out of book lost. If you are playing sharp lines this can always happen to you. R7, white against SOS: Out of book after 14…O-O. This was a very good line for Shredder. Shredder found the right plan and won very nicely. R8, black against Insomniac: Out of book after 15.Ng3. Again a good line for Shredder with a nice win. R9, white against Zchess: Out of book after 6…Nd7. Again we wanted to play 3.f3 as we knew that Shredder plays the resulting positions very strong and we had a very high score with this line in our test games before London. This is the line I can understand the criticism the least. We wanted to play 3.f3, we had good results with it and we won this game, so why not playing it? There are even some grandmasters who frequently play this line and I don’t see what should be wrong with it. There where also some discussions here about how to define the quality of an opening book, so I will try to give you my opinion on that as well. Well, the easiest and most important factor is certainly the result the program gets with this book. It is very important that the program knows how to handle the resulting positions and it is absolutely not important how human players judge the positions or if grandmasters play it or if it is the favourite opening line of Kasparov. That all doesn’t matter. This is true for a tournament opening book, for a commercial book you also need some different points like a greater variety, so the user doesn’t get bored by playing the same lines over and over again. You also need to play modern and popular lines so one can test his and the program’s skills in this positions as well. Stefan
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