Author: Miguel A. Ballicora
Date: 11:57:29 12/29/01
Go up one level in this thread
On December 29, 2001 at 06:33:01, Peter Berger wrote: >On December 28, 2001 at 23:51:33, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote: > >>Actually, not. That is the vicious influence from Kotov's teaching that >>made everybody think that they should think like a tree. >>There are recently two books that finally made in writing what everybody >>suspected. "Improve your Chess Now" by J. Tisdall and "Secrets of Practical >>Chess". Not even amateurs are taught NOT to think like a tree nowadays, and the >>best book about it is "How to reasess your Chess" by J. Silman. >> > >Could you explain? First, let me rephrase my english since I introduce a double negation: "NOT even amateurs are taught to think like a tree nowadays, and the best book about it is "How to reasess your Chess" by J. Silman." So, the influence is less and less to think like a tree. Still, there is tree component in the teaching but is limited to purely combinatorial situations. >I have read "How to reasess your Chess" and my impression was that the main >procedure Silman explains that is different to Kotov is how to get the candidate >moves and how to evaluate the resulting positions ( imbalances etc). I think is more than that. All the analysis with the imbalances is a non-tree approach and that is the core of the book. After that, you come up with a very good plan that will be tried in an analytic fashion (extremely reduced tree). Still, there is an emphasis in when NOT to calculate. See for instance part III (calculations) page 37 that the first two examples of this chapter is how NOT to calculate!! "... To calculate any variation at all would be a complete waste of time". Diagrams 28 and 29. Then, it goes to analyze a complex analytical situation but see what is says at the end: "Old experienced dogs like myself, will often avoid calculation even in this type of complicated situation and just play Rc5 cold turkey (of course, we would still use the thinking technique to find the correct plan! [MY NOTE: which is a non-tree approach])" The he explain why he would do that an adds "...Normally, you may want to look a couple of moves ahead to make sure that everything is in order..." The point is, sometimes you need to calculate, sometimes you need NOT to. Silman quoted a funny remark by R. Reti. Whe he asked how many moves ahead a GM usually calculates, he replied "one move". This is an exageration but sometimes it is true. >Or to put it in different words: I thought his work was mainly about reduzing >the tree size and getting more selective. Kotov's is supposed to be very selective! I think is the opposite, set your mind to a "non-tree thinking way" to see the truth of the position and later, if needed, calculate as in Kotov's. See that this book if for beginners, Nunn's and Tisdall's particularly, present a more elaborate way of calculation. Even in wild positions they are far from Kotov's "selective alpha-beta" approach. >I remember the first position in the book with the Qa7 move. It has been my >impression that it should be possible to teach a computer to think exactly like >this. What position is that? I cannot find it. Regards, Miguel > >What do I miss? > >pete
This page took 0 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.