Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Opening Book for Engine vs Amateur Training Games

Author: Mike S.

Date: 10:34:41 11/10/02

Go up one level in this thread


On November 10, 2002 at 12:51:13, Bob Durrett wrote:

>(...)
>How do the engines select their opening moves when "dumbed-down" to play at the
>amateur level?  I suspect that they use the same opening book used against GMs.
>Do they?

Usually yes. I'm not sure at the moment if older Chessmaster versions had a
"book depth" setting in the personality profile. I've recently suggested such a
setting for Fritz 8.

But the user can decide to use another book for "dumbed-down" play. For example,
I have created an opening tree for the Fritz GUI, with variants only 6 plies
deep each:

http://members.surfeu.at/mscheidl/Kurzbuch.zip

This book will be much weaker than normal opening books, but OTOH it may even be
more difficult for a human amateur, when the engine continues with
non-theoretical moves from the 4th move on. (Mainly, the Kurzbuch is intended
for "book-neutral" engine matches. It contains ~20.000 positions.)

Btw. it is possible to create such a book with standard GUI functions, from any
database of games, in several chess programs. IOW, this provides an additional
way to choose which openings are played from the book: You could i.e choose a
database of less strong players to create the book from.

>(...) an opening book to be used for training of a weak player might be
>inappropriate for strong players and visa versa.

I don't think so... because:

>All of the opening books could be combined into a single opening book but with
>a different set of move probabilities for each performance level.
>
>Do any of the programs do that now?

Many professional GUIs let the user choose from different probability settings
or opening types from within the same book. Also, freeware engines like Crafty
have similar options to control the book usage. These options can even be
relatively complex, including detailed settings of book learning and usage of
the learning results.

Therefore I think, for the opening studies and practise of a human chess
amateur, a big good book will be best. He only has to care for a GUI which
offers the options like mentioned above.

Regards,
M.Scheidl



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.