Author: Eelco de Groot
Date: 16:48:09 11/11/02
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On November 11, 2002 at 16:10:13, chandler yergin wrote: >I congratulate the authors for this one volume Opening Encyclopedia; a massive >project & well done! They did use ChessBase & Analysis Engines to evaluate. >In light of the many Positions recently posted; where Fritz & Hiarcs could >not solve some simple positions in a reasonable timeframe; I wonder what >timeframe might have been used by the authors before concluding the analysis was >correct. I must admit some disenchantment with these Top Programs; and recognize >that in a Tournament situation under the USCF Time Controls, the Programs, >Tactical monsters they may be, often cannot properly evaluate some simple >positions. Under the restrictive time controls for these Human/Machine matches, >Opening Books, Horizon effects etc, I suspect some of the Humans are just >laughing all the way to the Bank. Am I over-simplifying..? What am I missing >here? Just a Novice here asking what maybe a dumb question, but would appreciate >any thoughts/comments. >Thank You! Hello Chandler, I think NCO is an outstanding one volume opening book. It is already three years old, which if you are a tournament player that wants to know all the latest novelties probably makes you yearn for an update. Alternatively you can buy a chessprogram with a really good opening book like Jeroen Noomen's work, and use it to check your favorite lines to see if they haven't been sunk recently. But NCO is very good to get an overview, to explore openings that you don't know very well. The authors used Chessbase and custom software extensively in formatting their book and assembling the information. A lot of the actual analysis is still honest handywork though, mainly for the reasons that you mention. With such a huge amount of data to evaluate it is next to impossible to assemble that without errors creeping in. That I think is where the computer analysis was most useful, by letting it calculate along the lines they were considering, it was possible to at least eliminate the gross tactical blunders. I quote John Nunn from the introduction: 'All the authors used Chessbase and a large database to assemble the information for each table. This was then pruned down to roughly the right size, while an analysis engine looked over the author's shoulder, ready to spot any nonsense that might otherwise creep into the book. The author then evaluated each line.' So I don't think many positions were analyzed very long by computer, there simply wasn't the time for that kind of investigation. The authors could have made use of computer analysis like from the CAP project, but everything still would have to be evaluated by a human expert to get to really the standard of evaluation that was achieved here by John Nunn, and his coauthors. I doubt they got much salary per invested hour for their work, even if the book isn't cheap to come by... Regards, Eelco
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