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Subject: Re: Century 3 may be the best positional player.

Author: G. R. Morton

Date: 19:30:02 12/11/00

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On December 11, 2000 at 19:49:35, Terry Ripple wrote:

>On December 11, 2000 at 19:21:56, G. R. Morton wrote:
>
>>Century 3 is touted as a superb (the best?) positional chess player, which my
>>own non-scientific tests on well known GM actual game positions seem to bear
>>out.  Are there are any formal positional test results?  Does any strong player
>>(besides the reviews at the Rebel site) have an opinion Century 3’s positional
>>play as the best (whether or not it may make it to the SSDF top few)?
>-------------
>The SSDF list only proves that what ever program is on the top of the list was
>the best at that time in beating other chess programs under similar conditions
>but doesn't prove that it's the best at winning against very strong players at
>tournament time controls of 40 moves/2 hours.
>
>Rebel Century 3.0 was fine tuned to play it's best against strong human
>opponents and there for it is possible that it might not be the best program
>when it is matched against one of the other top programs. I believe that one of
>the reasons for this is that the more knowledge a program has it can't think as
>deep into the position because it is a slower thinker compared to the tactical
>monster "Fritz" that has less knowledge to slow it down, so it has more time to
>think deeper because of it's faster search. ( Just my opinion )
>
>Regards,Terry
>Regards,Terry

I think you’re right. Actually I’ve heard this opinion before: I recall someone
(Schroeder ?) having said that positional knowledge is worth only about another
ply or two of search depth.  That may be true for winning against other
software, but not for the use of software as a sort of chess instructor
substitute.
Having a superb positional playing software, I believe,  (even if it is not
among the top SSDF few) is more valuable for instructional purposes since it
would be plenty adequate for tactical instruction but yet provide one with lots
of examples of good positional play that a non-master needs to see in a variety
of positions. Good tactics can be seen and studied in a ton of books, CDs, etc,
but (non-trivial) maximal positional moves are not as readily to be seen.

Regards, George



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