Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 11:14:13 12/23/02
To "review the bidding," we should be able to agree on the obvious observations. Then, having put aside the obvious, there remain a few more observations worth making. What makes the initial position so special? It's because it is the single most analyzed position in chess. The top minds in the chess world have been analyzing this position for hundreds of years. Other opening moves are similar, but have not received quite as much attention. Endgame positions are also "special" since they have been extensively studied. It would be unreasonable to expect a chess engine to analyze such positions in just a few minutes and learn as much as has been learned over hundreds of years by human analysts. That's why we use opening books. As for endgames, there may still be more to do. Suppose the entire human chess community analyzed a middlegame chess position exhaustively for the next 600 years. In that case, it seems reasonable that a book, similar to an opening book, would be the thing to use for games starting with that special position. The above is the "obvious" part. So, if we can put these obvious observations aside, what else is there about the initial position that is "special"? Another question is: "Do chess engines do as good a job of analyzing the initial position as they do for other positions?" One thing is that most of the pieces are poorly positioned. Mobility is bad. Tactics are missing. Generally it's not a good position. OK. Now, do you suppose other positions occur in chess that are as bad as this one? If so, how well do chess engines do with such positions? Perhaps chess engines are not optimized for analysis of such positions because they occur so rarely. No need to worry about the initial position, since the book takes care of it. A big question in my mind is whether or not chess engines do a reasonable job of analyzing the initial position. Given the absence of an opening book, is the initial position really all that difficult for an engine, when compared to other positions? Anyway, I could go on and on with such questions. What do you think? Bob D.
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