Author: Robin Smith
Date: 17:13:45 01/19/01
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On January 19, 2001 at 14:05:31, Dana Turnmire wrote: > I used to play in a few tournaments though not active now and always used I.A. >Horowitz's book "Chess Openings Theory & Practice" as my "opening bible" when >preparing for tournaments (I'm just a club player). I was contantly told that >it was outdated and practically ANY opening manual was outdated in a short >period of time because opening theory was constantly changing. > I recently went out and bought a copy of MCO 14 to test it side by side with >my old standby. I have CM 8000 on an AMD k6-2/500 64 RAM. I took ten opening >variations from the Ruy Lopez section in both books and used only the variations >in which White had a "clear advantage" (a plus sign over one minus sign). I >then let CM 8000 play out the game. > RESULTS: In Chess openings Theory and Practice White had 7 wins 2 draws and 1 >loss. MCO 14 had 5 wins 3 draws and 2 losses. > Is a strong master today any more capable of analyzing an opening position any >better than a strong master 37 years ago? It doesn't seem to be the case. > I always liked the layout of "Chess Openings Theory and Practice" better than >the modern counterparts. Is there any possibility it can be updated with >algebraic notation in the future? Would anyone like to try this challenge with >NCO, ECO or any other highly regarded openings manual? This experiment you have done does not really compare the quality of the two openings books. I compares how big an advantage +/- is in Chess OPenings in Theory and Practice to how big an advantage +/- is in MCO 14. In modern chess a relatively small advantage can be enough to win the game compared to the past, and so +/- might not be objectively as big an advantage today as in the past. That is to say, what once was only +/= might now be considered +/- because technique and understanding have both improved. If you really want to test these two openings books, find lines that are identical to some point, but where the evaluations are very different. You will find that the newer opening book has some refutations of what was in the older book. This is the main advantage of having the newer book. And you don't need to run computer self play experiments to verify it. The Horowitz book is very old, and I am sure that MCO14 has much better data in many lines. Robin Smith
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