Author: Larry Woodlock
Date: 23:35:59 02/22/98
I've owned Fritz5 for some months now, and used Fritz 4.01 before
that. Over the last months I have noticed a marked increase of chess
knowledge in Fritz5 vis a vis its predecessor. An example:
Just this past week, I started building up a King and Pawn endgame
database in Fritz5, transferring information from conventional books
into an "e-book" that I could use to study and refresh my recall of KP
endgames - something that "Fritzbase" is very good at. I had ordered
the Hiarcs6 module to assist in the analysis, but it seems to be lost in
the mail. So, "stuck" with Fritz, I would take out the CD (entering the
positions under "infinite analysis" leads to hangups during the
occasional CD search), and enter the positions with variations and
commentary. I couldn't help but be struck by how well Fritz analysed
the positions - far better than I had expected any program to do. I had
concluded over the past week that Fritz5 would be a truly formidible
opponent in KP endames, something I was not expecting to find.
So in addition to what I thought of as a real increase in
positional sophistication in middlegames, Fritz5 is also skilled in the
endgame. Then came the new list.
I had expected that Fritz5 would do well if it ever got up and
running at SSDF, but I could not quantify that expectation from my
subjective conclusion that Fritz had had a major knowledge upgrade.
Like some of the other correspondents, I am surprised to see that Fritz5
vaulted into first place, but I can't reject the SSDF data as freely as
others do.
Who among us can specify just how much the extra chess knowledge
should be worth at 40/2 against a variety of opponents? Occam's Razor,
William of Occam's injunction to select the most economical hypothesis
capable of explaining a given dataset, suggests that we not presume
latent flaws in SSDF to explain away this result, but rather that we
accept a theory that Fritz5 has seen a dramatic increase in real playing
strength at longer time controls.
This is certainly a big leap, and more data may moderate the
finding, but for now we should consider congratulating the Fritz team
for shaking up our little world.
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