Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 11:17:44 05/21/98
Hi all: My first aquaitance with Junior 4,6 was an article of my friend Enrique in WCCR , where he basically said Junior was of course a member of the top league, but maybe not the very best and in any case it did not seem to give something new or moving to the owner; it was just another top program and even Enrique said he felt a lot less pushed by Junior than by other top programs. His feeling were that with Junior he had the chance to develop his plans, not with Mches 7 or other very enterpirsing programs. Of course his impressions are valid as much are "his". This is a good point to remember when we discuss here about the relatives virtues of the programs: that depends in a very great degree of the style of the human side, of his weakneses and strenghts. By that reason and after several games against Junior my impression is altoguether different and I want to share it with you. By the way my games are all played at 40 moves in 60 minutes, a rythm I think is the very best as much has something of a tournament game but no so slow and demanding of time. Well, I believe Junior 4,6 is not impressive and dramatic in his way to push, but push heavily. So I do not share the opinion that Junior just wait mistakes and then fish what he can. He does not launch an attack with screems and a battle axe in the good, threatening style of CSTASL or Fritz 5 pre-update version, but I have seen that he gets a hold of any weakness and do so systematically until fruits ripens and are collected. And that's heavy. This seem weird as much as Junior is supoposed to be just a "fast searcher" engine as Amir Ban has said once and again, but not matter what his searching gets advantages that have an strong smell of positional playing capabilities. Maybe this should begin a discussion of the following issue: is positional understanding and force a virtue ONLY related with a source code full of knowledege? And vice versa' Junior make me wonder if a good and fast search device cannot get, at the end, after all, a better or equally good positional judgement. If so, some points of discussion should be radically reviewed. Fernando
This page took 0.01 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.