Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 14:21:36 08/25/98
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On August 25, 1998 at 02:16:11, Didzis Cirulis wrote: > >.... >>I believe there will not be a very big difference between the engine without >>opening book and the engine with an opening book. >>I expect the difference in rating to be less than 100 if the program is a good >>program. >> >>Uri > >Chess Tiger 11.5 is a good example for this. Its opening book is very small, and >game is out of book in less the 10 moves very often. But it still finds >excellent moves! > >Didzis You probably are trying the wrong openings. Most programs will do just fine in typical Ruy Lopez's, or QGA/QGD positions, until there is a gambit pawn offered. Then they will grab it, which is probably not always bad, but they will also try to hold it, which is quite frequently fatal. The KGA is one example where black generally plays an early d5 to give the pawn back with an ok game. Holding the pawn is dangerous. In the QGA, I have seen programs try to hold the pawn by playing b5, and get into enormous trouble. Those are the kinds of positions where a book helps... because most humans wold play exactly the same way if they didn't "know" that trouble was 10-15 moves away and caused by a lack of development... The Evans gambit is yet another one that leads to trouble for black... If you try some gambit openings against your favorite program with the book turned off, you might well be amazed at just how tangled they get trying to hold that pawn. Or, on the other hand, a program playing a gambit from a book tends to get into equally gross positions trying to win the pawn back, rather than use the tempo gain to carry out something else... By excluding a book, you really exclude a lot of opening theory because the programs simply do poorly at such openings... although they can look like GM players in other openings. But watch out for the gambits, because "material" causes problems...
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