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Subject: Re: Opening books

Author: Stan Arts

Date: 13:01:51 06/23/02

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On June 23, 2002 at 14:32:35, Kurt Utzinger wrote:

>It is known that good opening books [may] have a good influence on the strenght
>of chessprograms. Based on running tests, I however dare say that the opening
>books do influence the results of computer matches to a much greater extend I
>have ever imagined. Results to follow in some weeks.
>
>Has somebody made similar tests to report?
>
>Kind regards
>Kurt

Yes, it seems that openingbooks take care of the fact that programs can´t
calculate
some very long term positional things, and so create a good position for a
program to
start doing it´s tactical calculating. I saw that some program have huge
openingsbooks
and sometimes know the first 10-15 moves "out of book", that way you are well
into the
game and the type of game its going to be is pretty much decided. You can that
way
"take away" the type of games your program seems to be bad at I think.
Sometimes.

I added a small openingsbook to my program, to stop making itself look silly at
the
beginning of a game, and it makes MUCH difference to not using it. The rest of
the game
it plays much better, because it had a good start, causing better development
etc.
I just put in about 50 moves in book.. but it makes a big difference.
Plus you can more easelly add a random factor so it´ll play different openings
like I did.

PS.: I like the idea that programs have and use openingsbooks (and endgame
bases) against human
players, since strong human players have this type of knowledge aswell, but when
one program plays another, I think it´s silly to do that, because it´s not the
actuall
"program" doing all the playing. My thought would be something like..: Max first
5 moves
out of book or so, for computer-computer matches :) i think it would be more
fun.
Ok that was just another thought.

Stan



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