Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 12:54:39 01/29/02
Go up one level in this thread
Dear readers, I only glanced at this report. But in my hasty glance, several items struck me as either erroneous or highly questionable or simply unclear. Here are my first impressions: 1) The claim is made that this data was drawn from GM matches since 1991. Who compiled this data? Did it really come only from matches or do these include tournament games? Under what conditions were these games played? Speed chess? On-line? Were both players GM's or was only one player a GM? 2) The claim is made that GM games were played using "St. George's Defense" since 1991. I find this extremely difficult to believe. Other than Tony Miles nice win over Karpov (wasn't this prior to 1991?), I can't think of ANY other GM who would have replied to 1 e4 with 1...a6 in a serious game. Shouldn't we be told what the representative sample of games were? For example, in order for these statisctics to be valid, we need to know if this data was drawn from a pool of 4 games or 4000 games for each opening. 3) Who labeled these moves with these silly opening names? I never heard of the Anti-Veresov Opening before. The moves given as 1 d4 d5 2 Nc3 Nf6 3 Bg5 are simply the Veresov Opening. This report defines the Torre Attack as 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nf3 g6 which is clearly incorrect. These moves can just as easily transpose into a King's Indian or Gruenfeld or even a Pirc or a Modern. Why is 1 g3 a Benko Opening? After 2 Nf3 is it still a Benko Opening? How does that differ from the equally mislabeled 1 Nf3 as the King's Indian Attack? After 2 g3 is it still a King's Indian Attack or a Benko Opening? Is this report properly capturing transpositions? If 1 Nf3 is labeled as a King's Indian Attack and White DOESN'T fianchetto his King's Bishop, are you still labeling that as a King's Indian Attack? How can 1 b4 be the Polish Defense when it's a White opening move? Most of the world knows this as either the Orangutan or Sokolsky Opening. Why is 1 c4 the English Opening but 1 c4 c6 is the Reti Opening? Clearly if White next plays 2 c4, we have transposed in the Queen's Gambit Slav. Anyway, there are other equally erroneous opening names...I could go on, but you get the point. 4) One wonders, given the numerous errors in labeling the openings, whether they correctly tracked this data as the opening transposed into other lines. Therefore, is the same game counted more than once as the English Opening transposed into the reti and then various forms of the Queen's Gambit, only to resolve as either a Nimzo-Indian or Caro-Kann? 5) What's the point of all of this anyway? Openings don't always have an impact upon the game's result. There is after all a middle-game and sometimes an ending involved. Also many GM's select certain openings for reasons other than their intrinsic merit. Somethimes they try to play against an opponent's weakness. Sometimes a GM isn't feeling well and wants a rest or a quick draw. Anyway, my point is that the mere selection of an opening is often not a reflection of the GM's assessment of that opening, but played for extraneous reasons. 6) Far more meaningful data can be extracted from your own Chess Assistant, Chess Base, or NIC databases. These databases give more meaningful data because you can control and filter the pool of games and remove duplicates, etc. Then you get more meaningul data on not just the whole opening (highly meaningless), but on the more meaningful variatins and sub-variants. But even this should be questioned. After all, somebody could introduce a new motif in an opening. Given the skill of this player, he may win several games with it even though his opponents (all weaker players) played their opening responses perfectly. Also, a GM could introduce a new line and win 9 games with it until somebody refuted it in the 10 game, rendering the line a bust. Still the database will record 9 wins versus 1 loss for a line that is intrinsically busted. I could go on, but hopefully you get my points. All the very best, Stephen
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